Development and Expansion of Disease Management Decision-Making Tools Across Multiple Soybean Regions

Plan of Work – Carl Bradley, University of Kentucky Soybean growers across the US face several common yield limiting diseases that can result in annual losses from $2.2 to $4.6 million. Decision making tools provide a method to target fungicide applications, simultaneously improving fungicide efficacy and proactively delaying the development of fungicide resistance. With funding from soybean checkoff funds, the development of the Sporecaster app has been successful in helping farmers in northern states make fungicide application decisions for management of white mold. The Sporecaster platform has since been used to develop a framework for frogeye leaf spot for northern soybean growing regions. Given the importance of frogeye leaf spot to Southern, Mid-southern, and Atlantic regions, the present proposal aims to expand the frogeye leaf spot prediction framework to these regions. In addition, the proposal aims to consolidate research activities across these regions for two other common disease problems, Cercospora leaf blight and target spot, laying the groundwork for comparable prediction tools for these diseases. The project will use historical datasets of fungicide trials, new uniform fungicide trials, spore trapping networks, and improved detection tools for predominant foliar pathogens of soybean to develop the data necessary for developing prediction tools. Each of these will independently provide information relevant to soybean farmers and other stakeholders involved in soybean production, and will also be combined into higher impact decision making tools relevant across the U.S.