January 23, 2006
The 2005 soybean growing season
provided researchers, growers, and industry representatives with
valuable information for 2006, yet there is still a great deal
of information needed to understand soybean rust development and
management, say plant pathologists with
The American Phytopathological
Society (APS).
Questions remain on how
destructive the disease will be and how it will affect soybean
production areas of the Midwest.
"Although soybean rust
developed slowly in the southeastern United States in 2005, the
disease has the potential to be more damaging in 2006 as the
number of over-wintering spores on kudzu in Florida and other
frost-free areas increase," said Layla E. Sconyers, Department
of Plant Pathology, University of Georgia, Tifton, GA.
The absence of soybean rust in
the Midwest during the 2005 growing season does not mean that
the disease will remain confined to the Southeast in 2006. "It
is difficult to determine whether soybean rust will have a
significant impact on soybean production in the Midwest, since
those areas have winter temperatures that are too cold for the
fungus to over-winter," Sconyers said.
For soybean rust to develop in
those areas, spores must be blown in from over-wintering sites
in the Southeastern U.S., Central America, South America, or the
Caribbean Basin. In 2005, environmental conditions were
conducive for disease development due to numerous hurricanes and
tropical storms, but the concentration or viability of spores
may not have been great enough for disease development in the
Midwest.
"Based on the knowledge gained
from this year and next, we will continue to refine forecast
models, warning systems, and provide management programs
tailored for the producer in each soybean-producing region in
the United States," Sconyers said. "With the information that
has been collected to date, and the continued cooperation among
state, federal, and private agencies observed in 2005, we have
the potential to accomplish a tremendous amount of work in
2006," she said.
More on the 2006 soybean rust
outlook is available in this month's APSnet feature article at
http://www.apsnet.org/online/feature/sbr. APS is a
non-profit, professional scientific organization. The research
of the organization's 5,000 worldwide members advances the
understanding of the science of plant pathology and its
application to plant health. |