Microbial ecologists say there is likely a naturally occurring microbe to combat the environmental stresses a crop could encounter in the field, including fungal disease, insects, nutritional deficiencies and stress from draught. The key is identifying the right microbe and then introducing any missing microbes through seed treatments.

Soybean fungicides can provide yield benefits when there are foliar diseases. Some reports show yield benefit of fungicides at low levels of disease or when disease was absent but this is not consistent.