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Less white mold in Wisconsin’s 2022 soybeans

A crop pathologist says the warm and dry weather helped control white mold in Wisconsin’s soybeans. 

Dr. Damon Smith is with the University of Wisconsin Madison. “Soybean blooms, that’s kind of the time when risk is high for that particular disease. You know, we were fairly warm and dry across much of the state, I mean, there’s going to be some areas of the state that have pockets of white mold and those are pretty typical areas but I’d say in general, it’s going to be a fairly low white mold year this year.”

Smith says the warm and dry weather followed by timely rains became a win-win scenario for growers. “When we don’t have those moisture events during the bloom period, we don’t get spores that are released into the canopy, so that was probably a win for us from a disease standpoint, and then we did catch some rain during grain fill so I think we made out okay even on yield despite the dryer conditions during that bloom time.”

Smith is optimistic growers will have good yields.  He says the free Sporecaster white mold predictor app for smartphones is getting a lot of use by more farmers this year across the country.