(Lakefield, Mn.)– Crops continue to progress toward maturity but there is now concern over a disease starting to show up in some area soybean fields. Jim Nesseth of Extended Ag Services in Lakefield says he’s been seeing signs of sudden death syndrome around the perimeter of some soybean fields…
“We’re starting to see a little yellowing in the top leaves of some of these plants, particularly on the end rows and field borders, any place where you might have had some more wheel traffic. It kind of likes those compacted conditions and wet soil conditions. And sudden death is something that doesn’t show up just every year. It just has to have the right environmental conditions to observe, but it’s a pathogen that overwinters and so it’s always kind of there. If we have saturated soils earlier on and just this kind of humid weather that we have and it will show up. Some varieties are more resistant to it than others but it’s a pathogen that can come in and if you have some soybean cyst nematode infestation in some of those roots, that pathogen can kind of enter in those areas of the roots.”
Nesseth says no treatments are available for the disease.
He adds that they’re also starting to see an increase in aphid activity in some soybean fields.
Nesseth says most of the earlier planted soybeans are a couple of weeks away from maturity. At that point he says they should be out of danger.
