Soybean rust risk in Ohio low

The risk for soybean rust on Ohio’s soybean crop is low and, once again, the crop may escape the disease.

Anne Dorrance, an Ohio State University plant pathologist with the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, said that hot temperatures throughout the Deep South, coupled with the lack of any major Atlantic storms, is keeping the disease at bay across such states as Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida and Georgia.

“At this point it doesn’t look like anything is going to happen on the soybean rust front over the next few weeks during the critical time of flowering and pod setting,” Dorrance said.

Dorrance and her colleagues are actively monitoring for the presence of soybean rust spores via spore traps set up at various locations across the state, in addition to leaves from Ohio’s 10 sentinel plots, and through laboratory research.

“From now until mid-August we’ll be collecting leaves and looking under the microscope every week to verify that rust has not been found,” she said. "If rust comes in at the end of August, it's not going to have a yield impact because it's just coming in to the state too late.”

Since its discovery in the United States in 2004, researchers have learned quite a bit about soybean rust.

It is manageable disease and typically overwinters on kudzu, but not all kudzu varieties are susceptible. The amount of inoculum is greatly reduced during the winter months.

For control, several effective fungicides have been identified. Soybean rust is UV light sensitive and sunlight can actually kill spores. The development and spread of the disease is highly weather dependent. Soybean rust does not appear to jump onto soybeans from other hosts until after flowering.

For the latest information on soybean rust development across the United States, visit the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Integrated Pest Management-Pest Information Platform for Extension and Education Web site at http://www.sbrusa.net .

The "Using Foliar Fungicides to Manage Soybean Rust" manual has also been updated. To purchase a copy, visit http://www.oardc.ohio-state.edu/SoyRust/ .

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