With the several inches of rainfall that has impacted the state of Iowa, one disease is now affecting almost half of the counties in the state.

Landus Cooperative Field Agronomist Dan Bjorklund says southern rust has exploded in the past two weeks. He tells Raccoon Valley Radio the corn plant disease that has an orange tint to the spores on corn leaves, was identified in four counties on July 18th and according to the Crop Protection Network, southern rust now is in 44 counties. Bjorklund explains that the disease was brought into Iowa via strong southern winds this year. 

He describes how important it is to make timely fungicide treatments as one farmer last year didn’t treat for it until August 6th via an aerial application.

“Their plane could not get the corner of one of his fields because there were high lines and they had to raise up. And honestly by the third week of August, it was just covered with these rust pustules, these little small objects. And it was so orange, I had a white polo (shirt) on, when I got out of that field, I was just covered in orange. I looked like I was a Tennesse Volunteer fan. It will kill your corn and obviously August is so important for filling the ear, that he had a 50 bushel hit in that corner. We cannot afford that this year.”  

Bjorklund advises using fungicide is really the only treatment option.

“The fungicide, really to use the human analogy, is the antibody for these fungal diseases. If we get sick, we take an antibody for ten days to knock it out, and that’s what we’re trying to do with the fungicide.”

Bjorklund points out that soybeans are seeing more root and leaf diseases as well, which are mainly concentrated in the water-logged areas in fields. However, he adds that despite these concerns, Bjorklund says some Greene County farmers are estimated to have their best yields for bushels per acre that they ever have.