Air November 17, 2004

Thank you Jerry, and good morning everyone.

A quick reminder to cow calf producers to call in to the Extension Office and make your reservation for our cow calf meeting December 2nd at JC Livestock Sales. We hav several great speakers on the agenda and a good meal. If you pre-register by November 23rd the cost is $10 or $15 after that or at the door. Call the Extension office if you need more details!

By now I'm sure that you've all heard that Asian Soybean Rust has been found in the United States. It was found about ten days ago on research plots in Louisiana. Once the disease had hopscotched over to South America it was only a matter of time until it arrived in the northern part of the continent where one of several tropical storms would be able to sweep it across the Gulf of Mexico. What does this mean for us? Well, obviously it means nothing right now. Our soybeans are dead and for the most part harvested. Like all rust diseases, soybean rust needs green living tissue to survive. More than likely, researchers had planted late season soybeans specifically to try to pick up the disease. Unlike many rust diseases though, this one appears to have a broad range of alternate hosts. This means it can survive on more than just soybeans. One of the principle alternate hosts in the southern US is kudzu. Given all the kudzu in the southeastern US this disease should have no problem surviving winters. Their are many other legumes that could serve as alternate hosts, but only time will tell if any of these will provide a green bridge through the winter in Kansas. In most winters I'd say no. What you can do is to be careful in selection of your soybean varieties. As of yet, I have seen no information on resistance in our common soybean varieties but the genes do exist that could be incorporated. The disease is more likely, in most years, to be a problem on late maturing varieties, so group 5 beans in southeast Kansas are going to have the highest risk. This disease will act like wheat rust in that a severe untreated infestation will defoliate a crop in just a couple of weeks. If you plant medium maturity varieties around here we hope this will avoid the worst problems. Bottom line is that this is a developing situation and a year from now, hopefully, we will have a while lot more information.

This is Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook 2004.

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