Syngenta Thrive

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Homes must be built on a strong foundation and kept clean and pest-free to ensure its occupants can thrive — and so should your crops! It’s time to inspect your crop protection program and fill in the gaps before problems arise.

Weeds

Corn & Soybeans

Wheat

  • Kochia
    • Drought tolerant, so it is competitive in tough environments
  • Wild oat
    • Seeds can mix with wheat grains at harvest, resulting in price penalties

Diseases

Corn

Soybeans

  • Phytophthora
  • Pythium
    • Can infect soybeans within 90 minutes of planting
  • Sudden Death Syndrome (SDS)
    • Can result in flower and/or pod abortion, reducing yield potential
  • Frogeye leaf spot
    • Can cause up to 35% yield loss

Wheat

  • Stripe rust
    • Produces spores which embed in plant leaves, inhibiting photosynthesis
  • Fusarium head blight
    • One of the most economically devastating wheat diseases

Insect Pests

Corn

Soybeans

Wheat

  • Wireworms
    • If wireworms are not addressed, up to 100% yield loss has been observed in the Pacific Northwest, and inconsistent stands can have consequences, such as replanting or weeds filling in bare spots

CROP PROTECTION PLANNING PUNCH LIST

Think like an inspector — based on your field’s history, what problems can you expect?

Weeds

  • What are my most problematic weeds?
  • Did I have any weed escapes or practices that could have spread seed?
  • Does my herbicide program provide overlapping residual through crop canopy closure?

Diseases

  • What diseases were most prevalent last year?
  • Am I being proactive in disease management?
  • Besides disease mitigation, how else can fungicides benefit my crops?

Insects

  • Which insect species were present in my field or neighboring soybean fields last year?
  • Have I considered in the impact that low levels of multiple insect species may have on yields?

Now that you have your list, it’s time to identify what you can do to prevent them from compounding into bigger issues. Click here for Crop Protection Solutions.

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One of the main takeaways from scouting is Mother Nature finds a way. Pests change when selection pressure changes, and scouts must adjust to stay a step ahead.

The history of cotton scouting gives us insight into how the practice evolved in other crops. Mid 1920s: North Carolina cotton reached almost 2 million acres. Late 1960s: Acreage dropped to about 50,000 acres when J.R. Bradley, Ph.D., arrived in the state.

When growers had to spray for boll weevil, they sprayed so often that the treatments killed off most other insects, including those beneficial in the field.

The National Cotton Council called for volunteers to campaign for a boll weevil eradication program in their communities. Marshall Grant, a farmer, was key in getting that legislation passed in North Carolina.

Once the Boll Weevil Eradication Program was successfully executed, growers could reduce their frequency of spray treatments.

European corn borer and tobacco budworm replaced boll weevil as the major pests.

Spray treatment thresholds were very important for worm eggs in cotton. When thresholds were reached, it was time to treat.

Bt cotton, which is toxic to the larvae of bollworms and tobacco budworms, was released  in the 1990s. Bt cotton technology was so effective at managing worms that insecticide applications declined and new stink bugs and plant bugs became foremost cotton pests.

Cotton scouts still look for plant bugs, stink bugs and the damage they cause. There is no substitute for boots on the ground, but new technologies like satellite, airplane and drone imagery arm scouts with better knowledge.