As the fall is approaching and crop harvest plans are being made, it is important to continue to assess disease issues in corn and soybean. These assessments aren’t being made in order to make plans for in-field management, but to potentially improve the quality of grain that is harvested.

Disease Considerations For Corn At Harvest

Now is the best time to begin scouting corn for stalk rot issues and also fungal ear rot potential. Diseases such as Anthracnose stalk rot and Gibberella stalk rot are becoming apparent in corn. Inspect the stalks integrity on the outside. Be sure to squeeze the outside of the stalk to gauge the potential severity of the rot on the inside of the stalk. Cut a few stalks from diverse areas of the field to see how rotted stalks might be. 

In figure 1, the stalk on the left has a severe case of Gibberella stalk rot, while the stalk on the right is far less rotted. The more severely rotted stalks are, the more likely they will lodge. Therefore timely harvest is important. Growers should target harvest on fields with severe stalk rot before fields that have less stalk rot, in order to minimize harvest losses due to lodging.

Ear rots can also be an issue at harvest time. Fusarium ear rot, Gibberella ear rot, and Diplodia ear rot (figure 2) are just a few that can damage corn in Wisconsin. Ear rots are becoming evident in some corn scouted in the last week or so. It will be critical to check fields in the next several weeks in order to make decisions on what fields to harvest first. 

Harvest priority should be placed on fields with a high level of ear rot. As corn stands late into the fall, certain ear rot fungi can continue to grow, damage ears, and cause increases in mycotoxins in grain. The quicker these fields dry and can be harvested, the more likely the losses due to ear rot and mycotoxin accumulation can be minimized.

Soybean Disease Considerations At Harvest

In Wisconsin, the main disease to consider when making harvest plans in soybean is white mold. White mold is present in some soybean fields in the state and has caused considerable damage in a few of those fields. Remember that the white mold fungus not only causes stem blight and damage, but also causes the formation of sclerotia (fungal survival structures that look like rat droppings) on and in soybean stems (figure 3). These scelrotia serve as the primary source of fungal inoculum for the next soybean crop. 

They also get caught in combines during harvest. These sclerotia can then be spread in combines to other fields that might not be infested with the white mold fungus. Therefore, it is important to harvest non-infested soybean fields first, followed by white mold-infested fields, to be sure the combine does not deposit any residual sclerotia in the non-infested fields. If this is not an option and you must 

harvest white mold infested fields before non-infested fields, be sure to clean the combine between fields.

For more information about white mold management in soybean you can click here and scroll down to “white mold” or watch a video by clicking here.