Soil-borne Plant Disease Trials @ Illinois

Over the next few years, companies will release new and updated ways to use seed treatments to control soil-borne diseases in corn and soybeans. Researchers at the University of Illinois are looking to assess how well each of these might work.

One of the first steps in the scientific process is to lay out the trials. In this case that means intentionally inoculating the area with a disease says University of Illinois Extension Plant Pathologist Nathan Kleczewski, “We are putting in some different soybean and corn trials today looking at different seed treatments for controlling seed-borne diseases. So, we have some pythium trials, some SDS trials, and some rhizoctonia trials. We’re getting those in the ground.”

Kleczewski is testing how well both old and new seed-treatment products work. He’s wants to see how efficacious they are at controlling corn and soybean plant diseases, “We are also trying some existing products utilizing different mechanisms of application to see if they might be more or less effective than current ways we are applying them.”

The extension based research done on the Univeristy of Illinois farms will guide future recommendations the Land Grant makes as it relates to the use of seed-treatments.