The Twitter accounts @corndisease and @soydisease are a place for farmers agronomists, crop consultants, and specialists to collectively document and track
corn and soybean diseases this growing season. To help out with the effort, just take a photo of the crop disease when you’re out scouting fields and then tweet the photo to @corndisease or @soydisease with the name of the disease, and the county and state it’s found in. The hope is to use tweets of crop disease photos from around the country for future disease tracking and prevention purposes.
So far this growing season, southern rust has been confirmed in the following states: Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia and Florida. Visit the @corndisease account for the most current updates and view the southern rust distribution map on the iPiPE website. Recent soybean disease findings include: bacterial blight in Wisconsin and Iowa, and Rhizoctonia root rot in Iowa. Look for soybean disease updates in your area here.
The @soydisease Twitter account will also giving away a free field guide each week to the first person that can correctly identify a soybean disease in a photo that 
will be posted each Wednesday.
This effort is part of the Integrated Pest Information Platform for Education and Extension (iPiPE).
For questions, contact Daren Mueller, associate professor, extension plant pathologist and Integrated Pest Management coordinator at Iowa State University, or Carl Bradley, professor and extension plant pathology specialist at University of Kentucky.
Related Links:
Use Social Media to Capture and Track Crop Diseases
Tips for Capturing Crop Disease Photos on Your Mobile Device
A Farmer's Guide to Soybean Diseases
A Farmer's Guide to Corn Diseases
Links to this article are strongly encouraged, and this article may be republished without further permission if published as written and if credit is given to the author, Integrated Crop Management News, and Iowa State University Extension and Outreach. If this article is to be used in any other manner, permission from the author is required. This article was originally published on July 14, 2017. The information contained within may not be the most current and accurate depending on when it is accessed.
- Professor
- Extension Plant Pathologist