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ISU leads Midwest research to help reduce soybean SDS
 


By DOUG SCHMITZ
Iowa Correspondent

AMES, Iowa — Iowa State University researchers are leading a Midwest regional research project to identify farm management practices that help reduce sudden death syndrome (SDS) in soybeans.
“In Iowa and the rest of the Midwest, SDS is emerging as the No. 2 soybean disease after soybean cyst nematode, in terms of yield loss,” said Daren Mueller, ISU assistant professor of plant pathology and microbiology and the principal investigator for the three-year regional research project.
Supported by soybean checkoff funds through the North Central Soybean Research Program (NCSRP) and Iowa Soybean Assoc. in Ankeny and the United Soybean Board in Chesterfield, Mo., the project’s grant partners include ISU, the University of Illinois, Michigan State University and Purdue University.
“We wanted to look at how a combination of various production practices affected SDS to determine a better management strategy,” said Kiersten Wise, Purdue associate professor of plant pathology.
According to the ISU Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology, SDS is caused by a fungus that can destroy a small patch to an entire field of soybeans. Since its appearance 40 years ago, it has spread to most soybean-growing areas in the United States and Ontario, Canada, and continues to move into new areas.
A recent study looked at 11 planting date trial plots in Illinois, Iowa, Indiana and Ontario, where researchers planted soybeans on dates ranging from April 15-June 15, then compared SDS development.  Early-planted soybeans exhibited more SDS development, but they still yielded higher than late-planted soybeans with less disease, said Clarke McGrath, ISU extension agronomist and on-farm research and extension coordinator at its Iowa Soybean Research Center.
“So, this aligns pretty well with our recommendation that we don’t delay planting just to avoid SDS,” he said. “If you have a field that has SDS, if it works out, you could plant it last, but we wouldn’t recommend intentionally delaying planting.”
To date, Mueller said the most widely-used farm management strategy for lowering the risk of SDS is to select plant varieties that have demonstrated resistance to the disease. But, as SDS continues to be a problem, farmers want additional strategies, he added.
Started in 2013, the project’s objectives include determining if earlier or later plantings reduce the risk of SDS; studying the relationship between soybean cyst nematode resistance and SDS resistance; and assessing the effectiveness of new products, such as seed treatments and herbicides.
Leonor Leandro, ISU associate professor of plant pathology and microbiology and co-principal investigator for the SDS management study, led the biological research that identified a DNA test that measured how much SDS pathogen is in the roots of a plant and in the soil. Other biological research included studying when infection takes place and if susceptibility to the fungus lessens as the plants get older.
“What we found is that the later the fungus infects the seedlings, the more resistance the plants had to SDS,” said Leandro, referring to ILeVO, a seed treatment Bayer CropScience asked to have included in all tests being conducted by the project universities. Bayer provided the seed treatment and the funds needed to double all of the experiments.
“That’s why we thought a seed treatment would be an effective solution,” he added. “But we just didn’t see any products that were effective until recently.”
Mueller said this biological research was foundational to being able to test management practices.
“If researchers didn’t have tools like this, we wouldn’t know what management practices we are testing are working.
“Farmers are going to benefit because we have been able to identify a seed treatment that we now know works,” he added. “Learning how it works, how it kills the fungus and what management practices will work – all of this knowledge is because of soybean research checkoff investment in the university system.”
McGrath said supplies of the new SDS seed treatments are limited, “so from what my seed dealers and growers are telling me, the plan has been to spread the supply around pretty well so more growers can give it a shot. Guys may not get enough to cover a lot of acres on their individual farms, but we should have some product in a lot of fields across the state.
“If we have an SDS-type year, it will give growers some experience with the treatments and a good base to make decisions on for 2016 and beyond,” he said.
Researchers at ISU and other land grant universities have been collaborating to study SDS for more than 10 years, with the support of the NCSRP. In addition, the project includes researchers in Canada who are supported by the Grain Farmers of Ontario-Ontario Farm Innovation Program, a component of Growing Forward 2, a federal-provincial-territorial initiative.
3/26/2015