Hey Gil

[ECIN]

Nice article on Fungicides is the hard copy of SF .  I have done full field studies for both corn and beans , My findings on my farm have been that - Yes the fungicides do keep things greener , maybe for as much as 10 days on beans , yet have found very little yield response to them . I have talked to Dr. Wise up at Purdue and my results are very close to what her findings were for that given year and hers was in both small and large plots .

What I did find , was that insecticides did increase yields in beans everytime - like 1.8 to 2.5 BPA , this was is low pressure fields - I think it is a combination of total bug pressure , just not one over threshold , which is not practicing IPM very well - lol

I think my problem with useing fungicides for ( crop Health ) is not good - As you wrote about the resistance to frogeye , The problem is this is big money for the chemical companies , Maybe one of your questions should have been ,  What percentage of your sells is from Fungicides ?

BTW - I'm not against them - they are a tool in the box we need , but to just use it in the blind for -- ( Maybe ) a yield boost is not good .

Good job

Ken

[gil.gullickson]

Ken,

Thanks for the kind words on the article. Sounds like you have a pretty good testing program going on at your farm. Interesting that your results mirror those of Dr. Wise. Seems like even the large-field trials have varying results.

I didn't have room to include it in the article, but I interviewed one farmer on another topic 1.5 years ago who could testify to the greening effects. It worked so well he and his neighor spent a couple days clearing out green stems wrapping around the soybean head trying to harvest ripe beans! So there can be a downside to this, too. 

I agree with you about their being a tool in the tool box. I watched this resistant weed thing build up over the years and would hate to see the same thing happen to fungicides. I will say both industry and universities are watching the frogeye leaf spot resistance very carefully and are recommending things like mixing up different fungicide action modes, etc, to  forestall resistance. 

Thanks again for the feedback.

Gil