AMES, Iowa (RFD-TV) — A wetter-than-expected fall has slowed harvest in Iowa and brought additional concerns about crop disease.
Meaghan Anderson, an agronomist with Iowa State University, warns that the wet conditions have increased disease pressure.
“We also had a lot of crown rot come in late because we did end up getting so much moisture. So we didn’t necessarily have the foliar disease, but we had a lot of disease that seemed to be killing plants off early. Red crown rot was just found in Iowa for the first time this summer, way down in kind of the southeast part of the state in Des Moines County. I expect that in the coming years, we’ll continue to find it in more fields in Iowa. Whether or not it’s that it’s actually spreading in some cases, it probably will. Also just that we’ll get better about identifying it early.”
Anderson says farmers are now focused on getting crops harvested as quickly as possible to avoid further disease problems.
