There have never been more corn hybrid selections and protections on the market to help meet the needs of no-tillers. We’ve moved a long way from the hybrid guessing game no-tillers were in just a few short years ago.

Soybean growers are urged to monitor their fields and contact their local extension agent or a local university plant diagnostic center if the appearance of Asian soybean rust is suspected.

The so-called “green bridge” could be stealing yields from no-till fields without the growers’ knowledge. The green bridge is the method by which soil and foliar pathogens feed on cover crops, weeds or volunteer crops and survive long enough to infect a new season’s cash crops.

Dwayne Beck is known for a lot of things, perhaps crop rotations most of all. This Pierre, S.D., no-tiller manages the Dakota Lakes Research Farm at Pierre, S.D., and dedicates a lot of his time to studying the improvement of no-till operations with the help of crop rotations.

Asian soybean rust is a foliar disease, notes Glen Hartman, a plant pathologist at the University of Illinois who is heavily involved in preparing the U.S. for its arrival, “and tillage per se should not interact with rust incidence or severity.”

Back in 1997, a number of Michigan farmers found high levels of white mold disease in their soybeans. This was especially true in fields planted with Roundup Ready soybeans where weeds were controlled with Roundup Ultra herbicide.