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Crop disease impact begins before symptoms are visible

BASF research suggests plant diseases can affect crops nearly three weeks before symptoms are evident.

Technical Marketing Manager Kimberley Tutor says the latent period is the time between disease infection and reproduction.

“And during this time the disease begins to invade that crop tissue, it starts to produce toxins, basically wreaking havoc inside of the plant and ultimately decreasing productivity and yield. And again, all of this happens before you ever see a symptom.”

She says frogeye leaf spot in soybean has a latent period of seven to ten days, and for corn tar spot it’s 14 to 20 days.

“This is why it is so critical that we have planned preventative applications of fungicides. You want a quality fungicide that’s going to help protect your crop from what’s occurring inside the plant before ew can ever see it.”

Tutor says BASF used an electron microscope to show how crop diseases invade the plant causing unseen havoc.