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New app helps battle soybean white mold

Soybean producers will soon have a new white mold management tool in their hands….literally.

University of Wisconsin Plant Pathologist Damon Smith tells Brownfield they are currently testing a new smartphone app that helps producers determine when to apply fungicide to prevent yield-robbing white mold.  Smith says farmers can enter basic information in seconds and get instant answers.  “Information like your row spacing and whether the field is irrigated or not, and then you simply hit ‘send’ and it goes up to the cloud and pulls down all of the weather data it needs and does all of the math that underlies the model.”

Smith says the app can help pinpoint white mold risk for the exact soybean field being considered.  “We’ve done some testing over the last two seasons just in validation trials, and we’ve done those in farmer fields, so we’ve looked at about 68 locations in multiple states, and we know we are correct with this app about 80% of the time, and hey, that’s better than a coin flip in my book.”  The app figures out temperatures, humidity levels, and tells producers the level of risk, especially during that early bloom time when the plants are more vulnerable.

The app will be available in May for Apple and Android devices.  Smith says producers can use it as many times a day as they like in as many fields as they like for free.

He says white mold has been a huge problem in parts of the upper Midwest including Wisconsin during the past three growing seasons.