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New way to calculate impact of soybean cyst nematode
A new way to gauge the impact of soybean cyst nematode is available to farmers.
Greg Tylka with the SCN Coalition says they’ve launched an online tool called SCN Profit Checker to help growers understand what’s at stake.
“Soybean cyst nematode is the most damaging plant pathogen of soybeans in all of North America, and yet I wonder how that message is received because very often the plants don’t look horribly sick.”
He tells Brownfield the SCN Profit Checker makes real the economic consequences of SCN by harnessing decades of data.
“So when we captured all of that information and created an equation, there were four things that came out of it that were important pieces of information. And those are the only four pieces of information that we ask farmers or agronomists to insert into the calculator.”
Tylka says those pieces of information can be gathered through soil samples and include egg count through soil samples, a female index on commonly used SCN resistance, the percent sand content, and soil pH.
The soil sample tool described in this article seems overly simplistic. There is no mention of soil microbiome which can affect the SCN life cycle. Furthermore, the optimum ph for SCN is alkaline and soybeans actually thrive in slightly acidic soil conditions.
This would suggest treating the soil with topical organic materials and animal manures. There is slso much recent work on using soil based bioligical organisms, such as natural selected bacteria snd fungi.
The simplistic soil sample tool does not differentiate microbiome conditions and implies a basically dead soil and the use of only chemical fertilizer applications, which will predictably produce optimim noncompetstive conditions for SCN. The lowering of ph, alone should significantly improve soybean production and suppress SCN. However, the right microbiome conditions in the soil can not only significantly suppress SCN and other nematodes, but also enhance soy bean plant health and nutritional value. This being said, the four sampled inputs to this tool do not encourage any improvement to soybean yields and are based on thirty year old data and agro practices. Modern agriculture knowledge and methodologies can do much better.