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Ben Phillips interviews three university researchers about corn and bean pests at the Great Lakes EXPO, in Grand Rapids, MI. Originally recorded December 7, 2021.
A live weekly interview and discussion focused on vegetable production challenges and opportunities brought to you by the Great Lakes Vegetable Producers Network. We grow more together. JOIN US LIVE! We will be broadcasting live via Zoom at 12:30 ET/11:30 CT every Wednesday from the first week of March to the first week of September. Login at www.glveg.net/listen.
Ben (main) (00:00:21):
Welcome to The Vegetable Beet podcast. This is a rebroadcast of a recording that I made at the Great Lakes Expo, where we had a combined session on sweet corn and beans. And in that session, we had four guests lined up to talk about pests that had no legs at all, meaning diseases, no weeds, unfortunately, and we had a guest to talk about vertebrates like birds and deer and things, two legs, four legs. And then we had an entomologist talk about six legged bugs and problems associated with those on those two different crops. So it was a little bit of a different design and feel of a session. It included some musical interludes and things to mix things up. And it's a bit of a long one because it's a whole two hour session, but we recorded it and there's some good stuff in here. So I hope you enjoy and stay tuned for more episodes of The Vegetable Beet coming later this spring, have a good one. Welcome to the sweet corn and beans succotash session. This is a different session. This is not a regular session. This is named after this dish succotash, which is like a stir fry with corn and beans usually. Okay. And like a stir fry, you can do whatever the heck you want. So it's what I'm doing in this session, doing whatever the heck I want. And over the last couple years with COVID without having in-person meetings, we've had to get kind of weird and creative, how we did things with outreach and all that. We made a podcast called The Vegetable Beet. You can listen to it at glveg.net/listen. In that experience and working at that format, I started to pick up my guitars again, which I hadn't done in like 10 years and making stupid songs like that off of songs somebody else wrote. It's easier that way.
Ben (main) (00:02:26):
That's George Harrison. Anyway, this session's going to be a little bit like a late night television show. All right, I've got a few guests. We're going to interview them and I've got cards on your chairs there. And I was going to have a helper, but they called in sick. So when we have time for questions, you just we'll do it like regular questions. And I'll just kind of reread it into the mic down there, because I'd like to get a recording of the questions too, if you've got any and that's how we're going to roll with it. And our first guest is Marty Chilvers. I'm going to sit down there and you're going to sit over there and we'll, we're going to talk about the first set of things. Okay. Marty, Marty, Marty, for those of you who don't know Marty, this is not a typical place for, to see him. Marty's a field crop pathologist. He works with corn and beans, but for grain, not so much on the fresh market side, but he is happy to be here and I'm happy he's here because he's got the best info that I know of a couple of important diseases, one in particular for corn, and then also on beans. So Marty, I'm going to flip the slide here to show us, we're going to start with corn. Does that sound good with you?
Marty (1st guest) (00:04:23):
Yeah. Sounds great.
Ben (main) (00:04:25):
Thanks for being here too.
Marty (1st guest) (00:04:26):
No worries.
Ben (main) (00:04:28):
So I put up on the slide, a couple of pictures that are just fairly typical pictures of two of the sweet corn diseases that we wanted to get into today. And I thought we could start with tar spot. That's your bread and butter. Marty, what can you tell us about it?
Marty (1st guest) (00:04:42):
Sure.
Ben (main) (00:04:43):
With the sweet corn angle, right? Harvested at a different time than grain crops.
Marty (1st guest) (00:04:47):
Yeah. Well, how long do we have, I guess, right? We could chat for quite a while around tar spor, but I guess, and I did speak at this meeting a couple of years ago where tar spot was just starting to show up. It's definitely spread throughout the state.
Marty (1st guest) (00:05:03):
Now this year it's in every pretty much every county. It a recently introduced disease. And so we're still learning things about it. It's been in the US since 2015. The last time we had a major outbreak was in 2018. And we had a really big issue that year because we had a lot of water that year. It was very wet during the summer, right? 2019 and 2020 were pretty dry for the most part during the summer. So we didn't see that much of the disease. And the other thing that's been happening is this disease because it's been recently introduced in 2018, it was really only a problem on the west side of the state, but now it's spread all the way across the state. Ohio, Pennsylvania, Ontario, all having issues with this disease as well. And it was wet again this last season. And so we had some fields that really quite badly devastated, we're talking 50 to a hundred bushel yield losses is what we're hearing.
Ben (main) (00:06:03):
On the green?
Marty (1st guest) (00:06:04):
Yeah. On the grain side of things. Yeah.
Ben (main) (00:06:06):
Okay. I know some folks on the east side saw it, Dwight, you told me how you saw pictures of it. And I don't know if you saw it at your place at all, but you called me. So I think what's unique about this for sweet corn is the picture in the middle there shows that the lesions can get on the ear husk, the ear wrapper itself, which can affect marketability. So when do we usually expect to see it in this state?
Marty (1st guest) (00:06:35):
So, we first start picking up disease the beginning of July, but typically that's pretty low on the plant, the lowest sort of green leaves. And then it's going to move up during the season. I'd say we don't really see stuff starting on the husks until about August. I'd say, and I'm looking at my technician, Adam, over there he's nodding away. He agrees. It just sort of gets started in July, but the problem is it goes through many life cycles and it only takes about 10 to 14 days somewhere in there to go through a life cycle. So you get this really rapid, exponential growth of this disease. And August is the time and it really starts to explode. You've had an enough of that sort of low lying development to really start ramping it up and moving it up through the foliage. So August is when it really starts to explode.
Ben (main) (00:07:26):
Okay. How have growers been handling it when they start to see it?
Marty (1st guest) (00:07:32):
I mean, I think for both sweet corn and grain corn variety resistance, hybrid resistance is going to be absolutely critical. It's going to be your first line of defense and then fungicide application and a well-timed fungicide application. So if we're talking grain corn, if we have to schedule that aircraft today for next year, and we're only going to do one application, I'd probably put that on around about brown silk timing, but you know, it depends. And some fields certainly have benefited from a second application.
Ben (main) (00:08:06):
Okay. So in some cases, just one application will do it?
Marty (1st guest) (00:08:09):
Okay. Let me back up. So again, grain corn.
Ben (main) (00:08:12):
Okay.
Marty (1st guest) (00:08:12):
You know, we can see a 50 bushel protection from that one application.
Ben (main) (00:08:16):
Okay. And so grain corn goes a lot longer than sweet corn?
Marty (1st guest) (00:08:19):
Right.
Ben (main) (00:08:20):
Okay. Right. So sweet with sweet corn, getting harvested well in advance of grain corn and the disease coming in much later in the season, there'll be years, which we've already seen where there's no problem at all. And somewhere you start to see a little bit.
Marty (1st guest) (00:08:32):
Yep.
Ben (main) (00:08:32):
And maybe, and maybe one app could lick it maybe depending on the pressure.
Marty (1st guest) (00:08:36):
Perhaps.
Ben (main) (00:08:37):
Okay.
Marty (1st guest) (00:08:37):
Yeah. So yeah. I mean, I think it really depends. Yeah. On, yeah. Obviously, like you said, the year and how much pressure is in that area and then your production practices too. Are you irrigating? Because that really... Anything that drives leaf wetness is going to help drive disease.
Ben (main) (00:08:54):
Okay.
Marty (1st guest) (00:08:55):
Yeah.
Ben (main) (00:08:56):
What are some of the ingredients that have been working? Is there any resistance issues or is it like new enough that...
Marty (1st guest) (00:09:02):
It's new enough. Yeah. We're really concerned about fungicide resistance because of the multiple cycles of reproduction that this thing goes through. Yeah. So that's a major concern, but pretty much all modes of action that we typically use work.
Ben (main) (00:09:16):
Okay. So something like flint or a tebuzol or a tebuconazole or something like that would...
Marty (1st guest) (00:09:22):
Yeah. Yes. Yes. We have some fungicide efficacy data that's up on the Crop Protection Network.
Ben (main) (00:09:29):
Okay. CPN.
Marty (1st guest) (00:09:30):
So you Google... Yep, CPN, the Crop Protection Network, Google that. We've got a tag corn, get in there and then we've got a fungicide efficacy chart that we update every single year.
Ben (main) (00:09:40):
Okay.
Marty (1st guest) (00:09:41):
And rank those different products that are labeled.
Ben (main) (00:09:44):
I only mention those two because I know they're commonly used for something rust. Usually if rust comes in early, then that can usually hold it off. Yeah.
Marty (1st guest) (00:09:54):
Yeah. I think my understanding in the sweet corn, and you guys correct me if I'm wrong here, but very often you're making an application to try and manage for rust and there may be two or three applications, fungicide applications, because of that. If so, that may assist. But yeah, it's going to be one to watch just because it is new.
Ben (main) (00:10:13):
One seems like a lot to me.
Marty (1st guest) (00:10:15):
Okay.
Ben (main) (00:10:15):
For sweet corn, but it depends on the year. Okay. So there's a little bit of tar spot for you. Any questions on tar spot that you'd like to add into the mix?
Marty (1st guest) (00:10:27):
Or comments?
Ben (main) (00:10:28):
Okay. So the questions on re-treatment interval for a late season harvest. What could that be in a heavy pressure year?
Marty (1st guest) (00:10:37):
So, I mean, I think it depends on how much pressure is in that field. Right. If you're obviously seeing tar spot in that field and you want to keep those husks clean, we are probably talking every three weeks or so potentially.
Ben (main) (00:10:51):
Okay. Yes, sir. Questions about an app called tar spotter. A phone app. Okay.
Marty (1st guest) (00:10:56):
Yeah. So tar spot is something that's been pretty recently developed. It's sort of coming off the same platform as spore caster for a white mold risk prediction. And that's something maybe we'll touch on in a minute with the snap beans as well. Yeah. So it is just using logistic regression of like weather parameters to try and figure out what is the risk of disease developing. It doesn't tell you if you've got the disease present in your field or not just like, what has the weather been over the last, I think they're using the last 14 days. And essentially a lot of the parameters driving in that model are leaf wetness parameters. So they're using, I think it's IBM weather data, that's sort of cloud driven and positioned every two kilometers is a different point of data that's being pulled in for that. And so they're using parameters of leaf wetness. So relative humidity, I guess rainfall projections, those sorts of things. There's a lot of those sort of parameters pulled to drive. Okay. we've seen this much moisture. We think the risk is at this level.
Ben (main) (00:12:02):
So it's not really like a reporting tool, it's a modeler.
Marty (1st guest) (00:12:05):
Modeler.
Ben (main) (00:12:05):
Okay. Okay. I got you.
Marty (1st guest) (00:12:06):
Right. Right. Right.
Ben (main) (00:12:08):
Okay. Well, I'd like to move on to another popular corn disease and it's not really popular, I guess, but it happens every year. Get loads of questions every year. And I bet you can guess it based on the picture up there, it's called smut. Kind of an ugly thing. Gets on the ears, gets everywhere really. It can come out the stock, it can come out of the tassels sort of a mysterious bugger. Would you like to help me demystify it, learn more about it?
Marty (1st guest) (00:12:31):
Sure. It's another fungal disease. And surprisingly, I'm not as familiar with this disease. I mean, we deal with it in grain fields as well, but it's typically not a substantial issue as it would be sweet corn. So it's a fungal disease. But surprisingly to me, a lot of fungicide product don't seem to have efficacy or at least in the trials that have been conducted people don't report efficacy for control. Any type of stress, mechanical injury, wounds are going to favor disease development.
Ben (main) (00:13:08):
Okay. Yeah. I've seen... Well, I was reading a lot about it. As people ask me about it. It comes and goes certain times a year. It's more prevalent. Last year in particular, it was very tied to variety. Other years I don't seem to, or I didn't ask the right questions. I don't know. But last year the variety called Kickoff had it bad across the whole east side. I don't know what it was like on the west side or outside of Michigan, but that's what I was learning. And I thought, because it's early variety it's often planted before the frosts are done. A lot of the Kickoff region wide got a little frost nipping. And I'm curious if that could be an entry point, but that's quite a long time between then and ear set. And so I don't think that's really what did it, but it seems to be variety susceptibility, at least.
Marty (1st guest) (00:13:56):
Right. And if we're talking... Trying to manage any disease, variety selection is very... Like, that should be your number one go to. So if you've been dealing with a specific issue, see if there's a better variety in terms of disease resistance.
Ben (main) (00:14:10):
Most sweet corn growers plant in several varieties. And the... I hope you all, if you haven't, if this is a new crop for you, plant several varieties. See what works for you across a couple years and go with what seems to do well. And I can't avoid this part about smut. It always comes up when you read about it, some people like to eat it. And depending on your market savvy, depending on your market base, I don't know if there's opportunities or not. I see a lot of head shaking out there. It's a tough sell, but I have eaten it and you got to make sure you got some water ready because it dyes your teeth pretty bad. Yeah. It gets all stuck in your teeth and stuff. It's black. It's like a... Yeah, it's not that great.
Ben (main) (00:14:56):
Okay. So variety selections about the most you can do, if you do see some that comes up, it could be weather related could be variety related, but fungicides don't tend to help. I think that's the conclusion we can come up with there. All right. Let's move on to some beans you want to move on to beans?
Marty (1st guest) (00:15:13):
Sure.
Ben (main) (00:15:13):
Got some pictures of a couple of important diseases there. Oh, maybe I should ask it. Is there any other part of corn diseases that you'd like to get some answers about outside of just those two? And we'll see if we can handle it.
Marty (1st guest) (00:15:28):
I've got a question as well for the sweet corn growers here. Have they seen any quality, apart from the obvious blemish on the husks, have you seen any effect of tar spot on sugar content or any other sort of quality parameters? I know it affects test weight in grain corn and it's terrible on silage as well as... basically yeah... Affects quality, but any comments on that from any sweet corn producers?
Ben (main) (00:15:59):
To change the taste, that you know of. Okay.
Marty (1st guest) (00:16:01):
Good.
Ben (main) (00:16:04):
Yeah. That is good. I know some folks will sometimes cut the tips off the ears of corn with the worms are bad. Some people will husk suppose that could be something to do. Remove the wrap relieves just a couple or something like that. Of course, it's a labor expense. That could be something to do if you've got some spots on the outer husk potentially. All right. So we got a couple of bean diseases that we thought would be worth discussing. First one is white mold, which you hear a lot about in soybean production, dry bean production. And it can also occur in our green beans as well as like every other vegetable crop. It's a super promiscuous disease and many crops get it. What can you tell us about it, Marty?
Marty (1st guest) (00:16:49):
Sure. So, I mean, it's probably important just to understand how this thing survives in the soil and probably most of you are aware of that, right? So it forms those sclerotia resting bodies and you might be able to see that in the top left picture, there some sort of black bodies that are starting to form, it looks like mouse or rat droppings and that's the survival structure of the fungus and a place where that can be sort of released the next season. So they fall into the soil and they can survive for many years in the soil, but when conditions are right and you've got a certain canopy coverage, then they'll form and make these little mushrooms where you get spore production, right?
Marty (1st guest) (00:17:31):
And the infection point is primarily through flowers or dead leaf material. So that's where things are going. And that's important to know if you're trying to manage it. Even in terms of tillage, if you're trying to do long term management of the field, really the best thing to do after a heavy white mold outbreak would probably be to no-till some wheats or something into that because wheats are non hosts, right?
Ben (main) (00:17:55):
Okay.
Marty (1st guest) (00:17:55):
And you should be, if you can, no-till it you'd leave those sclerotia on the soil surface when they're not going to survive as well as if till them into the ground. You till them into the ground, now you've prepped that problem for the next two to four years, right? Something like that. Maybe a little bit longer even.
Ben (main) (00:18:11):
Okay. That's a cool tip. What you said about flower infections reminds me that I have seen it quite often in hoop house tomatoes and not where you might expect because you think it's a flower infection, but oftentimes I'll see it at the crotch of branches and stems and the infections spreads through the stem. And then sometimes it gets renamed timber rot depending on the crop that it's in because it infects the stem and then kind of collapses the whole plant. But what's likely happened is that the flowers were infected. The blossom drops, whether because of the disease or because the tomato matured, the flower drops, it gets stuck in the crotch of the plant. And then it infests from there. I see that really often. So if... I think that's another way I see that.
Marty (1st guest) (00:18:59):
That happens in now soybean too, I think.
Ben (main) (00:19:01):
Is that right?
Marty (1st guest) (00:19:01):
Yeah. Yeah.
Ben (main) (00:19:02):
Okay. What about Contans? Have you heard of that?
Marty (1st guest) (00:19:07):
Yeah.
Ben (main) (00:19:07):
That seems like another fall thing.
Marty (1st guest) (00:19:11):
I'm laughing because I twisted the arms and my technicians to set up a field trial and we had to buy like 600 pounds of weight to put on this planter, because it's not a no-till planter. Anyway, we did this great big setup and I didn't get any white mold mushrooms. And I think it's because I had so much corn residue on the surface that I, we just blocked them out. So I had this massive trial set up. I was looking at atrazine, which is a herbicide, right? And there's some evidence that atrazine can affect the way the spores are produced and make them non-viable.
Ben (main) (00:19:43):
Huh.
Marty (1st guest) (00:19:43):
But also had strips of Contans in there. And the whole thing was a wash because that had so much corn residue.
Ben (main) (00:19:49):
Shoot.
Marty (1st guest) (00:19:49):
So now we've got a tillage plus a Contans and atrazine and metribuzin trial. So it's more complex. So we have to wait yet another year to try and get data.
Ben (main) (00:20:00):
Okay. And so for those of you who have not heard of Contans, it's a biological product that's marketed as something you... The label is written such that you apply it in season and it's supposed to eat the little black nuggets that they make. But in the season, then black nuggets are like reawakening. And so I'm not sure what kind of effect it has.
Marty (1st guest) (00:20:24):
Yeah.
Ben (main) (00:20:25):
And I've heard of other people who have tried it, an off-label use where it's not like a non-legal rate or anything, but you just apply it in the fall, basically on non crop though. There's no crop there. They just put it in, in the fall, incorporate it with those little nuggets and they think it has worked better, but I don't have evidence, so.
Marty (1st guest) (00:20:43):
Yeah. So Contans, it's a biological, it's another fungus and this fungus parasitizes those white mold sclerotia, those little black nuggets, that's what we're calling them. So it just basically parasitizes them, kills them. And that's how it has efficacy. We have done some trials and predecessors have done some trials and showing that it works. Part of the problem is you only need a few of those sclerotia in the soil to produce spores and get infection to the next crop. So there's certainly plenty of evidence to show that by applying that Contans, you can reduce the number of sclerotia in the soil, but you only need a few to initiate disease again.
Ben (main) (00:21:25):
Okay.
Marty (1st guest) (00:21:25):
Yeah.
Ben (main) (00:21:26):
Okay. Well there's another picture up there. It's actually a few pictures wrapped together. It shows some... Oh yeah. James, James, what's up. The question is, can you reliably use weather timing as a tool or variety of maturity for as a management option?
Marty (1st guest) (00:21:46):
Yeah. So I guess we don't want you to put all your, what is it, eggs? In one basket, right? In terms of maturity groups. So there might be some good agronomic practice to having a slightly early maturity soybean, if we're focused on just soybeans, right? Because then you can harvest those potentially and stagger out harvest. But yeah, certainly we have seen it hint at that occasionally those early maturing beans sometimes escaping white mold infection. But I think more importantly than that, again comes back to variety selection and making sure we've got the most, the best resistance available. But yeah, that certainly the whole timing of it. And again, that those... Talking about apps, the sporecaster app can sort of help with that. If you're going to go out and actively manage things in terms of a fungicide application.
Ben (main) (00:22:39):
Can you talk a little bit about that sporecaster app?
Marty (1st guest) (00:22:41):
Yeah. So it's similar to that tar spotter. It's a similar sort of thing. This is using 30 day moving averages of weather data. And just trying to figure out what has the temperature and some of those moisture components been in terms of the production of those white mold mushrooms essentially.
Ben (main) (00:22:58):
Oh, okay.
Marty (1st guest) (00:22:59):
Have we met those conditions or not?
Ben (main) (00:23:01):
So it's about... It kind of predicts the awakening of the black nuggets.
Marty (1st guest) (00:23:06):
Yep.
Ben (main) (00:23:06):
And, okay, so it's like a bio fix almost. Cause once those are they're, they're just going to be around the rest of the season, right? Is that the idea?
Marty (1st guest) (00:23:12):
Yeah. I mean, they'll have a life. A certain number of spore releases and they'll be done as well, but it's predicting when that's occurring.
Ben (main) (00:23:21):
Okay.
Marty (1st guest) (00:23:22):
Yeah. And in terms of making that management decision, you've probably got a three week window to put that fungicide on. It's just helping you to optimize that timing. Is my risk really high? If so, maybe I'll go out and make that application.
Ben (main) (00:23:35):
Okay. Cool. Any other questions about white mold that you folks might have? Yes, sir. Can you elaborate more on wheat as a non host? Does it have to do with the living plant or just the straw and stubble.
Marty (1st guest) (00:23:52):
It's... So I could expand that a bit too. So I'm talking about the wheat because it provides a canopy for those... So I also said no till, right? Because I wanted to try and keep those sclerotia on the soil surface. And then we plant that wheat to provide a canopy in the spring so that those sclerotia germinate, release their spores, but they don't have anything to infect because they don't... Sorry. Yeah. They don't infect grass species.
Ben (main) (00:24:24):
So you're flushing them...
Marty (1st guest) (00:24:25):
Yeah.
Ben (main) (00:24:25):
Into a place where they can't really live?
Marty (1st guest) (00:24:28):
That's right.
Ben (main) (00:24:28):
You flush them and they're like, I got nowhere to go.
Marty (1st guest) (00:24:30):
So a twist on that too is cereal rye and roller crimping that, so there's a group at Cornell that had done a study there and they'd roll a crimson rye and basically getting those mushrooms or sorry, these black nuggets to produce their spores earlier than the soybeans or the snap beans were flowering.
Ben (main) (00:24:55):
Okay.
Marty (1st guest) (00:24:56):
And so flushing them out prior to the flowers being there. And some colleagues of mine are trying to reproduce this in soybeans at the moment.
Ben (main) (00:25:04):
Sort of like a stale seed bed for weeds, but with the sporulation of white mold.
Marty (1st guest) (00:25:08):
Yeah.
Ben (main) (00:25:09):
Interesting.
Marty (1st guest) (00:25:10):
Yeah.
Ben (main) (00:25:11):
Did that answer that? Did you... Okay, let's move on to this other set of pictures here. The first picture is the bigger one it's beans that are looking sort of sad. They're upright, right? But they've got some discoloration, they're a little stubby. And what it represents is a complex of soil pathogens that can affect beans at the root level. And there's a variety of pathogens that'll do it. And it can be a production limiter for early season beans certainly. And other times as well, if the weather conditions promote it. What diseases are we actually talking about, Marty?
Marty (1st guest) (00:25:47):
Yeah. So it certainly can be a complex. So what we would call water molds, so Pythium species and then true fungi. So Fusarium and Rhizoctonia and it's important to know the difference, because if you're using seed treatments, fungicide seed treatments, there's very different modes of action for water molds versus the fungi. It's basically plants and animals. Very, very different.
Ben (main) (00:26:14):
They're very different. Yeah. It's unfortunate. They fall under the same umbrella of diseases because then they're treated the same very often, but they're really different. Okay. So what... This is a good question. You mentioned about seed treatment it's I was going to ask you about seed treatments, whether or not they can help where with Pythium being one of the non-fungus, it's the other kind of disease that many fungicides don't work against. Which ingredients have you seen in seed treatments that do work for something like Pythium I think, or Phytophthora is another one?
Marty (1st guest) (00:26:48):
Yeah. So mefenoxam or metalaxyl. One of those products has been around for about 40 odd years and we went checking for fungicide resistance there and we didn't find any thank goodness.
Ben (main) (00:27:01):
Oh, is that right?
Marty (1st guest) (00:27:01):
Yeah. But there's a number of other products out now from a number of different companies like oxathiapiprolin.
Ben (main) (00:27:09):
Okay. Orondis is a common trade name for that oxathiapiprolin. Okay.
Marty (1st guest) (00:27:16):
Antigo.
Ben (main) (00:27:17):
As a seed treatment though? Oxathiapiprolin? Is that right? I have not seen that, but field crops get labeled for different stuff.
Marty (1st guest) (00:27:24):
Yeah. It's probably more of a soybean product.
Ben (main) (00:27:27):
Okay. And how about on the Fusarium and Rhizoctonia? What sort of seed treatment ingredients are common that would work for those?
Marty (1st guest) (00:27:37):
So typically we're looking at DMIs, maybe SDHI as well.
Ben (main) (00:27:43):
Can you tell me what those mean?
Marty (1st guest) (00:27:47):
Fluxapyroxad. I've got some industry people in the front...
Ben (main) (00:27:50):
Fluxapyroxad? I've heard that one.
Marty (1st guest) (00:27:52):
But there's a number of different products there.
Ben (main) (00:27:54):
Okay.
Marty (1st guest) (00:27:55):
And pretty... I mean, if you look at a soybean label, it's going to contain even from different seed brands, they're going to contain similar modes of action chemistries.
Ben (main) (00:28:05):
Yeah. There's a really common seed treatment on many vegetables called FarMore. I forget which company tends to put it into their seeds, but the default FarMore is usually two fungicides, sometimes three. And then the higher number you get, there's like FarMore, 300 FarMore, 400. I think once you get to 400 and above that means there's an insecticide included as well. But the base is at least two fungicides, like true fungicides. And so those would work for Fusarium and Rhizoctonia, I think.
Ben (main) (00:28:35):
Hey, this is future Ben here just to correct my errors on that whole rambling about seed treatments. FarMore is produced by Syngenta and the base formulation comes with three fungicides. Two of them are true fungicides. The third one is mefenoxam, which is a fungicide that works on some of those oomycetes like Pythium and Phytophthora.
Ben (main) (00:28:59):
But even if you have a seed treatment and the conditions are good...
PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:29:04]
Ben (main) (00:29:03):
If you have a seed treatment and the conditions are good for some of these root rots to take hold, what's the limit for the time that these are actually conferring help to your plants?
Marty (1st guest) (00:29:17):
So I think for most products, depending on the product we're talking a couple of weeks at most, in general, it really does depend though. We've seen some seed treatments that confer a benefit out to mid-August, right? In terms of suppressing the amount of fungus it's able to grow in that root system.
Ben (main) (00:29:41):
That's a long time.
Marty (1st guest) (00:29:42):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ben (main) (00:29:43):
Okay. How long do you guys typically keep your green beans in? Several pickings of course, but the time, how long is that? Two months, three months? Two rows beans pick six times? And about how many weeks does that equate to?
Audience (00:30:01):
I didn't really keep track.
Ben (main) (00:30:06):
Yeah. You think of them in terms of picks instead of weeks, I understand.
Audience (00:30:09):
I came back ...
Ben (main) (00:30:10):
Six times. Well, I think that could easily be two months, maybe three. Okay. Well, are there any questions that y'all have for Marty on any of these bean diseases or additional bean diseases?
Audience (00:30:26):
How much does it have to do with soil inoculum versus weather for these root diseases?
Marty (1st guest) (00:30:35):
There was an interesting example that came up this year in terms of the importance of field history and thinking about rotations and what we're doing in that field. So it was an irrigated field. We're talking about dry beans, right? So pretty closely related to snaps. They had not run the pivot this season, but there was very clear root rot under the pivot compared to outside of the pivot. So really that just gets back to what have you been doing over the years in terms of promoting an environment for root rots by pushing the water.
Marty (1st guest) (00:31:11):
You'd probably get in a situation where you're chasing your own tail, right? The beans are starting to wilt because of the root rot. And so we water and then we keep probably driving up pathogen load that way. So crop rotation is very, very important. It might not be apparent, but it's a very, very important piece of the puzzle. And then yeah, I mean heavy downpour. I mean we've lost plenty of them. You all have lost plantings before, right? Heavily driven by environment.
Ben (main) (00:31:41):
Thank you so much, Marty. Give him a hand. All righty. Well, our next guest is James DeDecker. He comes down here from the Upper Peninsula Research and Extension Center, and he's going to be talking to us about animals.
Ben (main) (00:32:00):
( silence) Welcome, James.
James (2nd guest) (00:32:39):
Thanks, Ben. $50 bucks to anyone that can guess the connection on that song.
Ben (main) (00:32:45):
Really, 50?
Audience (00:32:46):
A rising sun.
James (2nd guest) (00:32:49):
Nobody's going to get it. That's why I said 50.
Ben (main) (00:32:53):
Well, I gave you the answer before I played the song. James is here to talk about the animals. The Animals recorded that song.
James (2nd guest) (00:33:04):
Thanks. You saved my pocketbook there.
Ben (main) (00:33:08):
So we're going straight over to the two-legged and four-legged pests with James here. James, thank you for coming. This is going to be an interesting discussion. There's going to be some philosophy involved here.
James (2nd guest) (00:33:23):
Tons, yeah.
Ben (main) (00:33:24):
The first question I have is, many of you have heard the term integrated pest management or IPM and some of the tenants of IPM is trying to prevent problems from happening. And then, as they occur, try to figure out when you actually do take that action based on economics. And if I had to summarize it more briefly than that, I would say with insects, you can react. They're there, then you do something about it. You can prevent some stuff but that's how you do it. With diseases, it's a whole lot more focus on prevention and then reaction is a little tougher because the plants get it. They've got it. They're inoculated. You can only kind of stem the spread. Weeds are kind of in both camps. You can do a lot of prevention. You can also do treatment of weeds as they're growing. Where do wildlife fall into this spectrum of prevention and reaction?
James (2nd guest) (00:34:21):
Yeah. Wildlife are kind of unique as a pest complex and a lot of times we don't even talk about them in the context of pest management. It'd be really easy to organize a corn and bean pest session and just talk about weeds and sex diseases. Those are the kind of the common ones. But when I go around and talk to folks about wildlife damage, I really couch it within the terms of integrated wildlife damage management and the concepts of IPM for a couple of reasons. For one is the human dimensions aspect and kind of the complexity of managing wildlife as pests. And this is the figure that I love to share with people. This is actually from a publication out of the 1950s, talking about Whitetail deer in Michigan.
James (2nd guest) (00:35:03):
And what it's intended to illustrate is a different way that people envision wildlife or value wildlife. This could be different stakeholders out there. Maybe hunter versus farmer versus nature lover. But the other challenging aspect of this kind of complex evaluation of wildlife is the fact that we can all wear multiple hats when we're thinking about wildlife. So farmers oftentimes that I work with, during the growing season, they are thinking about deer, like the picture on the far right there, and then come November 15th, different hat goes on suddenly I'm a hunter and they're thinking about deer in a different way.
James (2nd guest) (00:35:41):
So that complexity and the value laid in nature of managing wildlife is I think an important reason for emphasizing IPM. Of course, multiple control tactics are another big important one. We don't really have a lot of great tools for managing wildlife life pests on the farm, or I should say efficacy-wise. We don't have say, pesticides that are going to give us 95% deer control or 98% deer control that we can achieve with chemical tools for other pest complexes. So efficacy is a challenge. The other-
Ben (main) (00:36:14):
I've heard you talk about how spraying for other problems: weeds, diseases, insects, whatever, it's often considered somewhat of a last resort, depending on your philosophy on it, but usually very effective. It's like it's going to work. But not usually the case when it comes to wildlife.
James (2nd guest) (00:36:34):
No, we've done a little bit of wildlife repellent testing in different contexts, mostly kind of like Marty's circumstance in field crops, but a little bit in ornamentals as well. And what we find is that efficacy for wildlife repellents is very contextual. It really depends on population density. It depends on application timing, which it can be the case in other pests as well. But it also really depends on what alternative food sources are out there for the wildlife to go after if they're not going to eat your treated crop.
Ben (main) (00:37:13):
You have a story about that, I think, about some exclusion cages in different environments, don't you?
James (2nd guest) (00:37:20):
Yeah. Well, so it's not a chemical example, but yeah, we've been doing some exclusion work to try to understand just damage versus undamaged plants, and how to measure that, and the impacts on yield, and so forth. And one year we were working in soybeans, and we set up exclusion cages, and we had eight or nine cages in a field. One of the fields was very remote, a small field, about six acres of soybeans. And the very other food available in the neighborhood there, particularly not any other beans. The deer ate every soybean plant in that six acres outside of the cages, and then they decided that they were going to go in those cages. And we're talking about five by five, six by six foot squares of mesh net, a place that a deer normally does not want to be, and they were going in there. So yeah, it's all about generally about risk versus reward.
Ben (main) (00:38:07):
So faced without other alternatives, they went into the cages as well.
James (2nd guest) (00:38:11):
Yeah, right. Yeah. The last thing I'll say on the IPM point is that IPM is really about risk benefit. We're trying to minimize the risks of pests and pest management while maximizing the benefits and the returns to those processes. And the risk benefit calculations are much more complex when we're talking about wildlife, which is I think a reason to emphasize IPM. Because aphids, for example, or a pathogen, what's the benefit, right? I mean, what's the benefit? How is it enumerated if there is one? And who's out there advocating for the benefits of an insect or disease pest? Nobody. Zero, generally.
James (2nd guest) (00:38:56):
So on the other hand, wildlife are seen as highly valuable. Many of them are seen as desirable. We have stakeholder groups. In fact, we have entire organizations that are entirely designed to advocate for the conservation or increase in the population densities of some of these species, and their value in terms of recreation, wildlife viewing, et cetera. So that complex risk benefit calculation of the fact that we have human beings on either sides of that scale, if you will, are another reason for IPM.
Ben (main) (00:39:29):
And like you said, wearing both hats. Where sometimes they're interested in killing all the deer, because they're a problem on their property just to get them gone. And other times wanting it to stack the freezer.
James (2nd guest) (00:39:43):
Yeah. Well, and just economics as well. I used to work in Presque Isle County in the Northeast. We have bovine tuberculosis that is hosted in the wild deer herd. And growers there raising cattle in the TB zone, dealing with TB risk mitigation, the costs, and things that come with that. And then they grow and sell deer bait to hunters because it's an incredible economic opportunity. And again, kind of the way that we can bifurcate our values and our lives sometimes and wear those multiple hats.
Ben (main) (00:40:15):
Yeah. No, that's really interesting, the deer bait thing. So as we were preparing for this, you wanted to know from the audience sort of what their worst wildlife pest is. Would you still like to open that up?
James (2nd guest) (00:40:33):
Sure. Yeah. I'd be interested to hear about kind of what your challenges are, your primary pest of concern and what crops, what kind of damage they're doing, and how you're addressing it if anyone's interested in sharing.
Ben (main) (00:40:43):
Okay. Would anyone like to offer up what their worst-
James (2nd guest) (00:40:47):
We can do this survey style, too.
Audience (00:40:48):
Raccoons?
Ben (main) (00:40:49):
Raccoons.
James (2nd guest) (00:40:50):
In sweet corn?
Ben (main) (00:40:51):
Yeah.
James (2nd guest) (00:40:51):
Yep.
Audience (00:40:55):
Birds.
James (2nd guest) (00:40:56):
Birds. Birds. What species of birds?
Audience (00:41:00):
Starlings and black birds. Yeah.
James (2nd guest) (00:41:02):
Yeah, starlings and black birds. Yeah.
Audience (00:41:04):
Mice and pumpkins.
James (2nd guest) (00:41:06):
Mice and pumpkins, yeah. Rodents are, I would say where we have some of the most work to do. They're really under managed in many cases. There's one guy who, I can't remember this meeting or another that we had come out from out west who worked specifically on rodent damage, and he had some great ideas. But man, we hear about rodent damage all the time in various crops and cropping systems. Certain situations exacerbate it terribly like residue, cover crop utilization, reducing tillage and all that thing, creating more habitat. But yeah, they're a big one that we really have pretty limited tools on.
Ben (main) (00:41:42):
We don't have any trophy mouse hunters here, do we?
James (2nd guest) (00:41:44):
Yeah, right. Well, that's probably part of it. Yeah.
Ben (main) (00:41:46):
Okay. Yes. In the back there.
Audience (00:41:49):
What's the best way to [inaudible 00:41:50].
Ben (main) (00:41:53):
Did you say critters? Keeping critters?
James (2nd guest) (00:41:55):
Birds.
Ben (main) (00:41:55):
Oh, birds. Sweet corn. Yeah. Okay. Well, I have a feeling because this is the sweet corn and bean session and that birds are a big deal. I'm not sure what the next slide is. I think it is the damage slide. Here are several pests that we're well aware of being a problem in corn and beans. And I'll go sort of describe these pictures because we'd like to make this into a podcast as well, and those people don't see the slides. But going from the top left there, we've got bird damage, pretty classic example of bird damage. They got the little talons and they kind of peel at the top of the ear there. Some say they're looking for the worms that might be in there or some say they're just going right for the kernels. I'd say it's a mixture of both.
Ben (main) (00:42:38):
We also got some bird damage in peas. They can open up pods. Another picture over to the right is some raccoon damage, which kind of further ribbing the husk, but usually go a lot farther. And what this picture doesn't show you is that the entire stalk is kind of bent over to ground because they kind of pull it down to themselves instead of climbing up it. They can't support their weight. And over on the top right is a picture of a border, a soybean border, which is pretty heavily trimmed up by deer, right on the perimeter of a forest edge there. Ground hogs would do the same thing. Going over to the bottom left is some more bird damage. Anyone care to guess what kind of bird did that? Geese.
Audience (00:43:24):
Sand hill crane.
Ben (main) (00:43:25):
Sand hill crane. Yeah.
James (2nd guest) (00:43:26):
Cranes. Yeah.
Ben (main) (00:43:26):
It's a pretty thin stand of corn there. Has anybody witnessed this happening? Yeah?
James (2nd guest) (00:43:34):
Who's got Sandhill cranes in their corn? Raise your hand.
Ben (main) (00:43:38):
Tell me about it. Like when do they come in? Are they at dusk, dawn, night, daytime.
Audience (00:43:46):
All day.
Ben (main) (00:43:47):
All day, just hanging out there.
James (2nd guest) (00:43:49):
Yeah. They're daytime feeders.
Ben (main) (00:43:51):
I've heard some people hypothesize that they might be able to read tractor tracks and know that okay, well this is just where a tire went versus this is where the seeds went, and they follow the row. Can you bear that out? Have you seen something like that?
James (2nd guest) (00:44:10):
I heard that for the first time this year from a grower that they actually were starting to damage a crop before it was up. Usually it's a visual cue of the plants emerging themselves. But they have learned in some cases, yeah.
Ben (main) (00:44:25):
I have had a similar experience, but not with these crops. It was a research trial on pumpkins at the research center and my pumpkins weren't coming up. They're coming up very spotty and I kept replanting. I eventually started putting these little styrofoam bowls over because I thought it was mice, that's what I thought. And I thought, okay, I'll put soil around them and it'll keep them out.
Ben (main) (00:44:44):
And then these little triangle bite marks kept showing up all over the styrofoam bowls. And I was like, who is doing it? Because no one is around when I'm here. So I ended up staying late and just camping in my car until dusk. And what I realized was the whole time I was out there, the seagulls were on the power line watching. So I mean, I hadn't seen seagull problems before, but I know they chased tractors that are tilling go after worms up in the bay, especially. But I hadn't seen them go after seeds like that before. Yes, Dwight.
Dwight (00:45:14):
I used Avipel on my corn seeds and it didn't work that well. The company said that liquid doesn't work as well as the powder. Is that true?
Ben (main) (00:45:22):
Yeah.
James (2nd guest) (00:45:23):
I'm glad. I'm really glad you brought up Avipel. So Avipel is a seed treatment repellent. It's anthraquinone I believe, and it can be quite effective. There are two formulations, like you say, there's a dry powder formulation that most people put on the seed themselves or put in the planter box. And then there is a liquid formulation that would be more of a commercial seed treatment. I've heard the same story many times from growers about the dry powder, and it could be a couple of things. One is rate and coverage can be a challenge with the dry powder. Sometimes you don't get as much coverage.
James (2nd guest) (00:45:59):
The other thing is there's some anecdotal information suggesting that it doesn't stay on the seed as well, once it's in the ground. So if you have a wetter spot in the field, we've had damage located specifically in those areas, or if you get a heavy rainfall and a lot of wash out, you can have some of that seed treatment come off the seed and it can be susceptible. But in general, Avipel has been a really effective seed treatment for birds that are going after the seed and specifically sand hill crane. So it's labeled for corn, sweet and field, as well as rice, if anyone's growing rice.
Ben (main) (00:46:33):
It was 24 C label for a while in Michigan. Do you know if that has changed?
James (2nd guest) (00:46:39):
I believe it's a full label now. Yeah, it was actually developed in partnership with the International Crane Foundation out of Wisconsin so it's got good science behind it. It's been available for a number of years and it is a good product. There's a cost to it, and back to kind of the IPM concepts here, one of the things that I often talk about is economic solutions basically for this problem. So if there's a constituency that wants more cranes on the landscape and farmers are bearing the cost of that through crop damage, maybe we can redirect some funds from those folks that want to see the birds, you know, Autobon Crane Foundation, whoever it may be, to the farmers to purchase a product like Avipel. Because it really is thus far a pretty sustainable solution to this particular problem. Now, cranes do damage to other crops other times of year and so it's not a perfect fix for bird damage by any means. And there're other birds that are doing other types of damage on corn. So it's one solution, but we need a lot of other ones, too.
Ben (main) (00:47:39):
What you just mentioned about leveraging the interests of conservationists to help bear the costs of the damage to farmers is interesting one to me. Do you have any other examples of those working?
James (2nd guest) (00:47:52):
Totally, yeah. Wisconsin has a program that's been in place, I think, since the 1930s. It's called the wildlife claims damage, sorry, wildlife claims an abatement program, something like that. But anyway, what it does is they take hunter license dollars for game species that are damage on farms, namely deer, geese, and so forth. Cranes are not a game species yet in Wisconsin, like Michigan. They take about $3 million a year from those licensed sales, and they direct them towards abatement measures, so fencing, repellents, et cetera. And then ultimately damage claims, basically insurance claims, that farmers can make against the state. And that is all handled through this program.
James (2nd guest) (00:48:37):
It's a really great example I think of an economic tool. It's been well utilized. The program has expanded over the years, and it's not without issues. It's not a perfect solution, but it is a way to begin addressing these problems. So I think a program like that would be fantastic in Michigan. The closest thing that we have that's starting in Michigan right now is on the predator side. There's a nonprofit group that we've been working with who's interested in buying guard donkeys for livestock producers in the upper peninsula that are having issues with losses to predators, namely wolves, but also other things like coyotes.
James (2nd guest) (00:49:10):
So I work at the UP research and extension center there in Chatham, we have beef cattle. We have started to have some predator issues, and so we're looking at getting a couple of donkeys to help prevent that. So kind of these ways of looking at sustainable solutions, that address the objectives of multiple stakeholder groups when it comes to wildlife management.
Ben (main) (00:49:31):
Very cool. Very cool. Yeah, and I only have one example of something like that, and Lori you're here in the room. Lori's from a farm called Forgotten Harvest, and at one point they got a grant from the World Wildlife Federation, I think, to devise a deer management tool. And I never would've thought that that would've been like a grant source for a grower to pursue for deer control. But because they were working on something that was going to be a nonlethal option, WWF was like, "Yeah, yeah. Here's some money. Why don't you make a run with it?" I thought that was pretty interesting. I did not expect it.
James (2nd guest) (00:50:05):
What was your tool?
Lori (00:50:07):
Well, we lovingly call it a deer blaster.
James (2nd guest) (00:50:09):
The deer blaster. It doesn't sound non-lethal.
Lori (00:50:14):
It is a high pressure motion sensor sprinkler.
Ben (main) (00:50:18):
High pressure motion sensing sprinkler on a pallet. It's mobile.
James (2nd guest) (00:50:23):
Yeah. Keeping it novel.
Lori (00:50:25):
[inaudible 00:50:25].
Ben (main) (00:50:28):
We wanted to try to set up a bunch of cameras, like in a big semicircle to get like a bullet time matrix shot of a deer getting blasted by the water, but we couldn't get it together.
James (2nd guest) (00:50:39):
Yeah. I'm envisioning it.
Ben (main) (00:50:41):
I brought a student to your farm this summer. She triggered it, and it got her to move pretty fast.
James (2nd guest) (00:50:47):
Yeah. I like it. And I like, especially that, like you say, it was funded by World Wildlife Federation. I mean that's fantastic. Those kind of collaborations are going to be critical moving forward.
Ben (main) (00:50:57):
I just had a couple other pictures here that I thought might be interesting to you. The one on the bottom is a picture of a Turkey crop. If you look closely, you can see feathers and a person's hand is holding a bunch of soybean seedlings. So Turkey's another one that is a game species that can put a hurting on a crop. Especially if you've got a bunch of babies, and they're all out. And then corn, again, more deer actually like taking half the cob off. So I'm kind of speaking to the choir on some of this damage here.
James (2nd guest) (00:51:25):
Yeah. Regarding species doing damage, we did a survey in Michigan and some surrounding states two years ago asking growers about wildlife damage and deer, by far, number one. Second category was birds, and then when we broke that down, in terms of migratory birds, songbirds, and so forth, migratory birds were up there because of the cropping systems we were looking at, and songbird kind of close second. All other species, turkeys and then other non-birds or deer really much more minor in terms of the percentage of folks that are reporting them as doing a lot of damage on their farms.
Audience (00:52:05):
What about black birds?
James (2nd guest) (00:52:05):
Yeah. Black birds can be a big one, particularly in sweet corn. So we kind of talked about cranes and damage to the seed early in the season on corn. On the back end, we've got black birds and some other birds that are damaging the ear itself. So some of the best work that I've seen done on that side of birds and corn is coming out to Cornell. And we actually had, I think it was year before last, Marion Zuefle, who's one of the folks from Cornell that did that work. We reached out to her this year. She wasn't available unfortunately, but they had two treatments that really looked great for them. One was detasseling, so they went through and detasseled the sweet corn.
James (2nd guest) (00:52:50):
I don't know if it's more of a physical removing the perching spot or my sense is actually, it's more of a visual maturity cue that is throwing off the birds as they're looking for corn, that's going to be the right maturity for them to want to feed on. If it doesn't have the tassel that they might not pick up on that, or maybe a combination of the two. But detasseling was the best treatment that they had.
James (2nd guest) (00:53:14):
The second best was air dancer or a tube man, which is inflatable tube on a fan. You've probably seen them at a used car lot. They basically are a dynamic scarecrow. They also had quite good results with those. A little bit more challenging because you need electricity out in the field. So a generator or a source of electricity keeps that thing running, but great results with that, too. And then I think they had a repellent was the third treatment that they had in that particular setup. And that wasn't as good as the other two. I think detasseling got a lot of potential.
Ben (main) (00:53:52):
So you got into some questions I was going to get into there with the basic categorizations of controls that we do have. We talked briefly about sprayable options before. I think you want to talk about it a little bit more. I thought you had a table up there you wanted to [crosstalk 00:54:07] those are sprayable.
James (2nd guest) (00:54:07):
Yeah. We can talk a little bit more. Yeah.
Ben (main) (00:54:09):
Okay. James has done a little bit of research on some of the sprayable options, and I believe this table is reflecting that.
James (2nd guest) (00:54:14):
Oh, this is actually fencing.
Ben (main) (00:54:15):
That's fencing. Okay. Well let's talk about that then. Let's talk about exclusion.
James (2nd guest) (00:54:18):
Lets talk about fencing.
Ben (main) (00:54:21):
What can you tell me about it, James?
James (2nd guest) (00:54:23):
Well, so fencing is, I would say, the gold standard. We talked about briefly about lethal control, and some people kind of think about that as the gold standard, but I would suggest that in general, you can't shoot your way out of most wildlife damage problems. Simply because we don't have enough time or lead to really succeed with that. You can with a concentrated lethal control program with many shooters over an extended period of time, put a dent in things, but really gold standard for control is exclusion. The issue is fencing is expensive.
James (2nd guest) (00:54:56):
So I think you have to understand the damage problem that you're dealing with in terms of the species causing damage, the crop that you're trying to protect and it's value. And then you have to look at some of these different ways that we can kind of measure success, if you will, in fencing. Whether we're talking about the cost of the materials and the installation, its actual design as far as height, longevity, maintenance, that's going to have to go into it. What you find is that there are certainly are tradeoffs and you may not need a 100% physical exclusion barrier to achieve your goals. And in fact, you may find that your sort of net return on exclusion is better with other types of fencing designs.
James (2nd guest) (00:55:41):
There is exclusion in and of itself, a physical barrier. There's also other what I call like psychological barriers, too. So you can layer physical exclusion with things like depth. With deer, 3D fencing, you hear about that quite a bit. They are prey animals with the eyes on the side of their head. They don't have very good depth perception, any fencing that has depth to it, multiple runs of fencing or an angled fence, is going to add another layer of protection. You can electrify that fence. You can electrify and then bait that fence to encourage them to come into contact with that fence.
James (2nd guest) (00:56:16):
So there's ways to kind of layer different modes of control on top of one another. And then just thinking about what are you really trying to accomplish, what resources do you have and which of these measures of success or different ways of looking at fencing designs are going to be most important for you? So this is a table out of a paper by Vercouter et al., and if anyone is interested, contact Ben or me, and I can get you that paper. But it's a really nice breakdown of some of the different fencing designs, and how they compare.
Ben (main) (00:56:46):
Yeah, that's pretty great. I know some folks here do have fences. Others may have temporary fences. I see that on there as a viable option, one of the cheapest, but also the most high maintenance because the deer rub up against them and then they bend and fall and things like that.
James (2nd guest) (00:57:02):
Yeah, many people, well, I say too many people defer fencing because that initial capital outlay and it's a death by a thousand cuts, right? Every season you're losing 10, 20, 15% of your crop and it doesn't take very many years and a high value crop to pay for that fence. Of course, it's capital upfront. Maybe you have to get a loan or something thing, but it really can pay back. The other thing on fencing that I never really thought about before, and I don't know if many people do, is this concept of perimeter to area ratio.
James (2nd guest) (00:57:34):
It's really quite simple in that the larger the area and the more square the design, the lower the perimeter to area ratio. Meaning the perimeter, how much fence and material you have to buy versus the area that you're protecting inside the fence. So you can maximize your investment by lowering that perimeter to area ratio, by having large areas, by having square shaped areas or regularly shaped areas, and you can make your fencing investment go that much further. So think about that when you're designing ...
PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:58:04]
James (2nd guest) (00:58:03):
Your fencing investment go that much further. So think about that when you're designing fencing too, it's not just, "Oh, I got this field. It's kind of wacky, but I want to fence it." No, cut that tree line out and make a square because it'll really save you a lot of money.
Ben (main) (00:58:13):
Yeah. How about with mechanical harassment options that need some sort of power source? Tell me about that.
James (2nd guest) (00:58:20):
So mechanical harassment, there's a thousand options, right? What I call scare tactics. One of them we just heard about, water cannon with motion sensor. That's great. I would say that like we discussed in that story, the key with scare tactics is switching it up. So having multiple things out there and making them dynamic as much as possible. The thing about the air dancer, why it was better than a scarecrow is because it moves around in random ways. And for the Cornell trial they put it on the timer. So it would go down and then pop back up. So that randomness is really critical to the scare tactics. We had a grower here a couple years ago that talked about his scare for deer and he was doing wacky stuff, but it was working. So the owls, everybody's got those, right?
James (2nd guest) (00:59:08):
You put them out, you leave them out there for 10 years. They rot away and you're like, "That didn't work." Well, this guy gets those owl effigies and then he puts them on a 50 foot pole up in the air. So they're up with the birds that are flying around above the crop and they're swinging around in the wind and stuff like that. And you think, "Wow, that's a totally different deal." Or he was using driveway markers like predator eyes and he would move them around the field of reflectors. Things like that... A scent.
James (2nd guest) (00:59:34):
So not just putting out a scarecrow, but I'm going to put some clone on, on the scarecrow. A lot of prey animals are scent driven. And so they're going to smell it before they even see it. Deer are pretty much blind. You can stand in front of them, as long as you don't move, they're not going to see you. Right? But their noses are incredible... Much stronger than ours. So scare tactics are all about keeping it dynamic, layering and doing things that are novel, right? That are going to be unusual for that animal's experience.
Ben (main) (01:00:06):
You had mentioned about sense. And you... Earlier, we talked about Avipel or... Was it Avipel?
James (2nd guest) (01:00:14):
Yeah.
Ben (main) (01:00:14):
Yeah. Avipel of the seed treatment. There's another pretty popular one, Avian Control-
James (2nd guest) (01:00:18):
Yeah.
Ben (main) (01:00:18):
Which is a scent based thing. That's more for birds. What's that all about?
James (2nd guest) (01:00:24):
So there's a range of repellent products out there. Avian Control's another one, MA Methyl Anthranilate is another common bird focused repellent. So there are some of these other repellent tools out there. Not only for birds, there's some repellents for mammals. In fact, I'm not a salesman, but I have pamphlets for two products that we've trialed personally. So I have experience with them. One called Plantskydd, which is a blood-based repellent for vertebrates like deer in particular and then another deer product out there. But anyway, the story on repellents is kind of what I said earlier. It really in general is about context. So you have to get it right as far as the product and the species and the rate... The normal things that we talk about with chemical control, but efficacy is not as good in general on some of these wildlife repellent products.
James (2nd guest) (01:01:20):
So it really has to do with context. The biggest thing that I've noticed is timing. With repellents, you have to be applying the repellent before the damage ramps up.
Ben (main) (01:01:31):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
James (2nd guest) (01:01:32):
Once in general, wildlife become familiar with a food source and determine that it's a good food source and if the surrounding habitat conditions are conducive to hanging out in that area, they're going to continue eating and they'll continue eating through a decent amount of disturbance, including in general, a repellent application.
Ben (main) (01:01:48):
Okay.
James (2nd guest) (01:01:48):
So getting out in front of damage with repellents is key. And then thinking about... Two, the timing of reapplication. A lot of them, you're looking at multiple applications and you want to think about not only when damage is occurring, but when is that damage, economic damage, right?
Ben (main) (01:02:06):
Yeah.
James (2nd guest) (01:02:06):
And when is it really digging the yield or the quality of your crop in a way that's going to hurt your pocketbook. And then beyond that, you got to think of the landscape scale. So not just your crop in your field and how you're putting that repellent on, but what is your neighbor growing? What is the adjacent land use in terms of wildlife habitat otherwise? Is there a deer camp next door that's feeding deer, or is it maybe poor deer habitat that your field is the only food source in the area? Unfortunately, we don't have a lot of control over what happens around us on the landscape in many cases, but you really have to be thinking at the landscape scale and manage your wildlife damage problem accordingly.
Ben (main) (01:02:45):
Great, James. I think one of the other... Oh, what... Can you tell me-
James (2nd guest) (01:02:50):
This is actually... This is the slide in terms of repellents. This is an old publication here. Just looking at some of the factors that contribute to deer damage and the way that I use this is simply to make the point that deer damage is a multifaceted problem and there's many things that are going to change the amount of deer damage on your farm. And similarly, the efficacy of any control measures that you put into place. So you really have to be thinking holistically or at the landscape scale, whether it's repellents or other tools that you might be using.
Ben (main) (01:03:23):
Great.
James (2nd guest) (01:03:26):
This is [inaudible 01:03:27].
Ben (main) (01:03:27):
Okay, this is what I wanted to finish up with. So we talked about all these harassment techniques... Some repellents fences as an exclusion technique. Particularly as it comes to harassments, what a lot of harassments do is, it elicits a fear response in the animal. And fear only goes so far without a real true threat of death-
James (2nd guest) (01:03:48):
Consequences.
Ben (main) (01:03:49):
Yeah. So they grow a lot of it. They get used to it and unless you mix it up. And of course, one of the things you can mix up is actually shooting them. So I was wondering, James, what can growers kill and who needs to know about it?
James (2nd guest) (01:04:04):
Yeah, it's a great question. It's kind of maybe the first question that we feel oftentimes from folks is, "How can I kill this?" Right? So important to know that why wildlife species are managed by different agencies, depending on what they are. The two big players are DNR Department of Natural Resources at the state level for game species... Those are species that have a hunting season, versus species that are managed at the federal level, namely migratory birds, and a few other ones. So we've put a publication together. There's a couple of printed copies. It's also available online. You can just Google, Do I need a permit to control wildlife on my farm? And it's an extension article. This table is the main piece of that article. And it simply lays out who has jurisdiction over a species or a category of species, whether or not a permit is required to remove that species. And so it's a really important tool just to stay compliant in terms of regulations, but maybe beyond that, to understand kind of the jurisdiction and how the relationships and oversight of these different wildlife populations function. Because when you, as a farmer have a problem, best thing that you can do is to reach out to the management agencies and inform them, educate them about the problems that you're having, what you've tried and then look into what solutions they offer. Most cases for wildlife doing damage on the farm, there are permits that you can get for lethal control. That is true for game species. That is true for migratory species. Really, it's only pretty much endangered species that you're not going to be able to remove. The problem is that these regulations are interpreted differently at the local level depending on the representative of whatever agency you're working with.
Ben (main) (01:05:53):
Okay.
James (2nd guest) (01:05:53):
So I hear stories all the time. I went to DNR, they came out, looked at my problem. They wouldn't give me permits.
Ben (main) (01:05:59):
Yeah.
James (2nd guest) (01:05:59):
Or I talked to... A story before we started today from someone that was going to be joining the session. They have crane problems. They went to DNR. DNR said, "Oh, Nope, we're not going to give you tags." DNR does not give tags for migratory birds. They have no jurisdiction. So for... That was either confusion on the part of that agent or somebody basically trying to put an obstacle in place for that grower, not saying, "Oh, actually that's fish and wildlife service, or USD wildlife services that are responsible for helping you with that problem." So you really have to be your own advocate. You have to understand how these agencies function.
James (2nd guest) (01:06:33):
And if you don't get service from an individual within that agency, you need to go to the next person above them in that agency or the appropriate agency, if you're in the wrong place and continue to seek that assistance, because there are programs and tools in place, you have a right to access them. It's just, you get a different story sometimes depending on who you encounter. Because again, this is a values-driven thing. A lot of these people are in conservation because they want to see these species in the landscape. That's great. So do I. I don't want to see animals entirely extricated from landscape either, but we have to be able to make a living in agriculture, right? So you have to really work to advocate for yourself with these folks and see yourself as an educator because many of them don't know what you deal with on the farm in terms of wildlife.
Ben (main) (01:07:23):
Great. I appreciate that, James and I tried to make this slide readable. It's hard to read. So James was great and he printed out some copies back there. If you wanted a shortcut for what... And this is more Michigan specific probably than if you're here from Ohio or some other place.
James (2nd guest) (01:07:37):
Yes. This is just Michigan. Good point. Yeah.
Ben (main) (01:07:38):
Particularly for the state level game species, but the migratory ones would be federal and across state lines. Yeah. Okay. You guys have any other questions for James while we got them up here? Yes, sir.
Speaker 1 (01:07:52):
I had someone from the DNR come out to look at my crop damage and they issued me five permits-
Ben (main) (01:08:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:08:02):
That I could use between dusk and midnight. And it took them about three weeks to get me that.
James (2nd guest) (01:08:08):
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:08:08):
What do you think of that?
James (2nd guest) (01:08:11):
Interesting. I hadn't heard about the time moment aspect. Certainly the timeliness or lack thereof can be a challenge. I would... Not to say they don't hold some of the responsibility for that particular scenario but one thing that we need to realize as growers is that we have to treat wildlife damage like any other pest management. So the tendency is to be reactive. I understand, we like to think maybe it's not going to happen. Or some years damage is greatly reduced depending on availability of wild food sources, what else is happening in the landscape, what your neighbors are doing, all these things, but we need to anticipate damage. We need to plan for wildlife damage. So do you buy your herbicide the day you're going to spray for your weeds? Probably not. Right? You're thinking, "Oh man, I need that chemical in the storage, because I'm going to be spraying at the X time."
Ben (main) (01:09:07):
Yeah. Yeah.
James (2nd guest) (01:09:08):
So we need to plan for wildlife damage management like we plan for any other pest, you have to develop a relationship with some of these agency folks so that they know you, they know your history than know what you've done for wildlife damage management.
Ben (main) (01:09:20):
Mm-hmm (affirmative). I see.
James (2nd guest) (01:09:20):
And then you call them on January 1st and they're going to say, "Oh, it's Bob again, he's been shooting X number of deer and he's been turning the tags religiously and he's providing data back on the... All these things-
Ben (main) (01:09:31):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
James (2nd guest) (01:09:31):
That relationship is there. He's going to mail you 10 tags before the new year because he knows that that's the way it goes. So yeah, very common story. And oftentimes those are challenging interactions that don't seem to be very helpful, but there are ways that we can try to develop that relationship in anticipation of the damage year over year to hopefully have better outcomes for everybody.
Ben (main) (01:09:58):
Okay. Any other questions for James? Yes sir.
Speaker 2 (01:10:01):
I came in late. I've got a flock of turkeys that's causing me headaches. What can you tell me about turkeys?
James (2nd guest) (01:10:06):
So in general we look at all the wildlife out there in Michigan or the great lake states. Turkeys generally come in below deer, crane... Some of these other key ones, some of the birds. But turkey numbers are increasing dramatically, right? I mean, everybody seems to be... I know I'm seeing more turkeys than I've ever seen in my lifetime. I'm 36 years old. The numbers are increasing dramatically. The other thing about these wildlife species that I think is so interesting... And this probably is true to some extent for other pest complexes is how intelligent and quickly they can adapt to different circumstances. And you'll find that populations in one area have learned that, "Oh, this crop or this farm or whatever it is, this time of year is a good fit for us." And they'll adapt to that and they'll start to use that food source or that resource. So I think turkeys are maybe an up and comer-
Ben (main) (01:11:00):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
James (2nd guest) (01:11:01):
That we're going to see more and more issues and more and more crops. So I guess be on the lookout for turkeys.
Ben (main) (01:11:07):
Yeah. Yeah. Yes, Dwight.
Speaker 3 (01:11:09):
On these newer style lasers for birds, how effective are those-
Ben (main) (01:11:15):
How effective are lasers for birds is the question.
James (2nd guest) (01:11:16):
Yeah, I personally don't have experience. I think it's an exciting area and a lot of people are innovating in that direction. To me, it makes sense, but I haven't tried, I don't know if anyone in the room has tried any lasers? In the back there, yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:11:31):
[inaudible 01:11:31] for two years.
Ben (main) (01:11:33):
And that's blackbirds and sweetcorn?
Speaker 4 (01:11:34):
Yeah.
Ben (main) (01:11:35):
Yeah. Wow. And-
James (2nd guest) (01:11:35):
So 70% reduction-
Ben (main) (01:11:37):
Is it the same pattern for the last two years or did it change the pattern?
James (2nd guest) (01:11:40):
[inaudible 01:11:40] all the time.
Ben (main) (01:11:42):
Change them all the time. Okay. It's-
James (2nd guest) (01:11:42):
Random.
Ben (main) (01:11:42):
To be able to change the program more frequently. Seems like it would be advantageous.
Speaker 4 (01:11:46):
70% patterning.
Ben (main) (01:11:47):
So do you try to start getting those rolling on fields that are silking or sometime after?
Speaker 4 (01:11:55):
[inaudible 01:11:55] start rolling before silk.
Ben (main) (01:11:55):
Before silk? Even. Okay.
Speaker 4 (01:11:56):
So-
James (2nd guest) (01:11:57):
Yeah.
Ben (main) (01:11:57):
A week before silk.
James (2nd guest) (01:11:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (01:12:00):
They might get used to it.
James (2nd guest) (01:12:01):
Yeah. And that principle applies all kinds of scare tactics. Yeah.
Ben (main) (01:12:05):
Cool.
James (2nd guest) (01:12:06):
That's exciting. I would say 70% reduction is on par with what we saw with the air dancer in our grain hemp this year. About the same.
Ben (main) (01:12:15):
Great. Okay folks. I have two sponsors that I've got to get through here. So we've got two very important sponsors gave us about a thousand million dollars. First one is Fartless Beans. This session is sponsored by Fartless Beans. You've heard of burpless cucumbers, new from the breeders at Half-Baked Seed Company. Fatless Beans provide 100% of the protein and fiber with 2% of the spider barks, moose calls, goose honks, bubblers, and one cheek squeaks that you've come to expect from regular beans. Yes. You've heard it right. And the SBD trait package guarantees that emissions are untraceable and can be blamed squarely on the dog. And we've got one other sponsor that might be a little tricky to do. I might need a volunteer. I might need a volunteer. Sir, you're close. One of you guys. You look like you probably got a finger that could hit a switch. That's all I need. Somebody's got to hit a switch when I say, "Go." And then hit it again. When I say, "Stop." All right. It's right next to you there. It's... Can you better... There's a cable going into that device.
James (2nd guest) (01:13:23):
Yeah. Switch is on our side here.
Ben (main) (01:13:25):
Don't hit it yet, don't hit it yet. Don't-
James (2nd guest) (01:13:26):
The big switch goes either up or down.
Speaker 6 (01:13:28):
Okay.
Ben (main) (01:13:28):
Okay. Which way does he have to push it when I say go?
James (2nd guest) (01:13:30):
You choose. You choose.
Ben (main) (01:13:31):
Oh, it doesn't matter which way it goes.
James (2nd guest) (01:13:32):
No one's high and one's low. We'll let him choose.
Speaker 6 (01:13:34):
We're going low.
Ben (main) (01:13:34):
All right. All right.
James (2nd guest) (01:13:34):
Okay.
Speaker 7 (01:13:34):
(Singing).
Ben (main) (01:13:34):
Okay. Heavy metal. Heavy metal. Heavy metal. Heavy Metal. Tube man. Tube man. Tube man. James, cue go. James, go.
James (2nd guest) (01:14:04):
Introducing the patented Heavy Metal Tube Man. Inflate your tube man and deflate animal damage on your farm. Tube man comes packaged with a weatherproof inflator fan and sound system maxing out at 165 decibels. That's a sound level of a full throttle 747 of metal.
Ben (main) (01:14:32):
Okay. Hit it. Heavy metal tube man. Very important sponsor. And our final guest, last but not least Zsophia Szendrei, from MSU as our entomologist specializing in vegetable crops. And why don't you come on up Zsophia? Whammy bars are fun. There's your intro music, Zsophia.
Zsophia (01:15:38):
Very sad.
Ben (main) (01:15:43):
Welcome Zsophia. Thanks for coming. Thanks for agreeing to this madness I've introduced to expo.
Speaker 5 (01:15:50):
Thanks for having me, Ben. I think I was part of the ideas generation. So I'll take part of the blame.
Ben (main) (01:15:56):
Okay. They were encouraging of me. Okay folks. So Zsophia is here from MSU. There's a slide with her name on it. Several inside pests of our beans, peas and corn... A few, I would say we might call drivers of the management. So for example, what I mean by driver, that means there are certain ones that are kind of background pests and you might not worry about them, but then there are others that really take off and you got to control them. And when you control them, you also control the background ones.
Ben (main) (01:16:31):
So they're not really driving the program, but they get hit. They get treated with an insecticide application that's meant for the real bad ones. And there's a couple of really important ones with these crops. And the first one I thought we might start with-
Zsophia (01:16:46):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ben (main) (01:16:47):
Of what our pest they both have in common in its early season. And it's the seed corn maggot, which I got a picture up here on the screen of corn seed. It's fairly exploited on the left. And then on the right, some bean seedlings that are also infested with this little maggot called the seed corn maggot. What can you tell us... Can you tell us a little bit more about the seed corn maggot?
Zsophia (01:17:11):
Yeah, sure. So seed corn maggots are super common in many different crops and you'll see them flying around. They look like house flies... There maybe a little bit smaller than the house flies. So if you go out on a sunny day, a lot of the times you will see them just flying around the crop. And that's usually how people notice that they have a seed corn maggot problem other than the fact that you will start seeing your crop... The little plants dying because the seed corn maggot larvae are attacking it from underground. And they're not very visible at that point.
Zsophia (01:17:46):
So they're relatively sneaky insects in that they're hard to notice and when you do notice them, it's kind of too late, so to speak. A lot of the times seed treatments are available in both beans and corn to manage them. And then also replanting is another way to manage them. They are attracted to wet and or high organic matter soils. So if you can plant in soils that are well drained, sandier soils that might be able to help crop rotation might be able to help. So there's a number of different things that if you know you have this problem, you can do. But yeah. So I guess that's a short intro.
Ben (main) (01:18:31):
That is a real thorough intro. You've stolen all my questions.
Zsophia (01:18:35):
Oh, sorry.
Ben (main) (01:18:35):
No, it's fine. I'll make up more.
Zsophia (01:18:38):
We'll get into it more.
Ben (main) (01:18:40):
You had mentioned seed treatments can be effective for these and I was wondering, throughout the season, especially with beans and sweet corn, there are many plantings. I mean, starting from Dwight (in March), which might be the earliest planting of sweet corn I know of in my area through to the end of July sometimes, just continual seeding of sweet corn. When do you see this pest as being the most problem for both these crops? Is there a window where they're bad and other windows when they're not?
Zsophia (01:19:13):
Yeah. So that's a good point. And I forgot to mention that earlier is that, there is an enviroweather model available for this insect. So if you haven't utilized that yet, I would highly recommend it especially if you have a problem with the insect to go on to enviroweather and figure out when that activity period that Ben is talking about is occurring. These insects have multiple generations a year. They can have up to three generations per year, but only that first one in April, May is the one that's the most problematic one for growers. Later ones are usually not that problematic because the insects are mostly active in colder temperatures. And also... I don't know if any of you have ever seen it when you walk around in your farm, you see flies that are infected with the fungus stuck to the plants. A lot of those are maggots that have become infected later on in the season and have died as a way of natural control by these entomopathogenic fungi is what we call them. So fungi that attack insects.
Ben (main) (01:20:19):
That's a big word for zombie flies.
Zsophia (01:20:20):
Zombie flies is what we also call them. So if you see them in your farm, leave them because that means that the spores are there.
Ben (main) (01:20:27):
Yeah.
Zsophia (01:20:27):
And they're available for next year as well.
Ben (main) (01:20:30):
[inaudible 01:20:30].
Zsophia (01:20:30):
But unfortunately they're not very good in cold weather early in the season. So they're not very good at that first generation, which is a huge problem-
Ben (main) (01:20:39):
Yeah.
Zsophia (01:20:39):
Because that's where you would like to see them killing the flies. Right?
Ben (main) (01:20:42):
Yeah. It's really easy to see this effect she's talking about in onions. And I don't know why that is. I think it's probably because the onions are shorter and the very tips are just... There's not a whole lot of foliage.
Zsophia (01:20:52):
Yeah.
Ben (main) (01:20:53):
There's a different fly that does the same thing in onions. But later in the season they start to get this fungus. It controls their brain and it makes them climb to the top of the plant that they're on. And then they explode with spores and then the spores go "poof" and they infect other flies. It's really cool.
Zsophia (01:21:09):
It's really cool. I also see them on weeds around the field.
Ben (main) (01:21:13):
We're bug dorks.
Zsophia (01:21:13):
I know, yeah.
Ben (main) (01:21:14):
We think it's really cool.
Zsophia (01:21:15):
We like these things, but yeah. So if you have weeds around your field or higher vegetation where they climb up, you can also see them more prominently there.
Ben (main) (01:21:24):
A follow up question-
Zsophia (01:21:25):
Yeah.
Ben (main) (01:21:25):
On the seasonality of this bug then. So it tends to be an early season pest of importance though it can have multiple generations. The enviroweather model that she was talking about, it's... You can go MSU's enviroweather website. If you didn't know what that meant. And essentially it's growing degree days for crops. Some insects run on temperature exactly like crops do. And if you can track the average temperatures of the days, then you can tell when a bug is going to turn into an adult or when it's going to lay eggs or mate or whatever. And that's the kind of model that this pest sort of runs on. I think it's... I don't remember what the base temperature is. 40s or something like that.
Zsophia (01:22:05):
Yeah. It's somewhere in the 40s. So it starts developing earlier than I would say the large majority of insects which is 50 Fahrenheit is where the majority of insects start developing. But as I said, this insect is really thriving in colder temperatures. So it will start developing early.
Ben (main) (01:22:23):
Can you get a little closer the mic?
Zsophia (01:22:24):
Okay. Yeah. Sorry. There was another thing I wanted to say. Oh, so if you go to the enviroweather website, the cool thing is that you can see the prediction for when the main flight, so to speak, is going to happen. So when the majority of insects are flying and mating, and you will get a message from enviroweather that says, "A week from now, you're going to see a lot of flies in your field and therefore you should plan on making an insecticide application." For example, if you don't have any seed treatment that will eliminate the majority of those females that are laying eggs at the time. So that could be a way to use that enviroweather information. This is some of the insects that we're going to be talking about in the remaining time here today. So it's a really cool tool to forecast based on how the development of the insect is happening, what's going to be coming up in the near future, and when is the right time for you not to be wasting the insecticide applications.
Ben (main) (01:23:36):
Yeah, that's a good point. It helps you have time when you can use an insecticide application. Do you think growers could use it as a tool to almost... If they want to buy treated seed and non-treated seed as a way to time which seed they're using at any point in time? Treated versus non-treated.
Zsophia (01:23:54):
I mean, I don't have a ton of experience buying treated and untreated seed. I have had a little bit with cucumbers and it was really hard to buy untreated seed.
Ben (main) (01:24:03):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Zsophia (01:24:03):
I don't know what experience you have out there when you wanted to have untreated versus treated. I'd like to hear that from others, but from my experience that one time when we wanted to get untreated seed, it was almost impossible from just vendors.
Ben (main) (01:24:18):
Okay. Yeah. Probably really vendor dependent. And what varieties that you're targeting to-
Zsophia (01:24:24):
Yeah.
Ben (main) (01:24:25):
All right. Do you all have any questions on seed corn maggot before we move on to another group? Yes, James.
James (2nd guest) (01:24:35):
Can you clarify if the flies are laying their eggs on the soil?
Zsophia (01:24:39):
Yes, that's a good question. So the flies can be laying the eggs right at the base of the plant. So it's partly on the soil, partly on the stems. And then the little larvae usually go down a little bit and then start feeding on the roots... The forming roots. So that's why you see the plant kill over because there is no roots to hold onto it at that point. Or it can do what is on the picture there. Right? So that's the earlier stage.
Ben (main) (01:25:09):
I don't want to throw a curve ball here, but I just noticed on those pictures of seeds... Maybe you all can confirm if you're seeing what I'm seeing. It almost looks like there's a coloration to the seed coat, which would make me think perhaps it was treated, maybe only fungicides and not insecticides. Are you aware of any resistance issues in this pest?
Zsophia (01:25:29):
No. I'm not aware of resistance issues, but that's a good point is that you want to make sure that when you're buying treated seed, you understand what is on that seed treatment or in that seed treatment, because there is a variety of things that can go on into that seed treatment. I don't know if people realize that there's a cocktail of pesticides and some of them are going to be just fungicide treated and multiple modes of actions of fungicides. Some of them are going to have multiple fungicide with one insecticide. Some of them are going to have multiple fungicides with many different insecticides or multiple different insecticides. So depending on the pest that you're trying to control and what your concern is, you might want to really dig into what your options are and what that seed is really coded with.
Ben (main) (01:26:19):
Great point. Yes, sir. Question was about how effective are other chemistries... neonics in particular in light of lowers band going away?
Zsophia (01:26:31):
Yeah, so neonic drenches are going to be able to control, and see treatments as well. Neonics are sold as seed treatments as well. So I think that that is an alternative to lowers band. There's a few other alternatives that we have been testing that are hopefully going to be registered in the coming years that could provide some solution. So I think that there are alternatives. I know that many growers are shocked by the fact that Lorsban is going away and it's going to be a-
PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [01:27:04]
Zsophia (01:27:03):
... shocked by the fact that chlorpyrifos is going away and it's going to be a problem for the coming years but yeah, neonics, I think, are an option.
Ben (main) (01:27:11):
Okay. We're switching to another group of pests here. These are caterpillars and many of these can get confusing when you're looking at, I mean, whether it's the worm or the moth, either way, even a trained entomologist can have trouble looking at some of these, especially the corn earworm, because they have very different colorations. Anyway. Some of these are up past of both, beans and corn. Can any of you guess which one? Were which ones? Any ideas?
Ben (main) (01:27:47):
One of them. Western bean, yeah. Fall armyworm, I'm not exactly sure. Western bean, for sure. It's a problem in corn and beans and corn borer sometimes. Yeah, mainly the Western bean is the big overlap one here. I've arranged this slide with pictures of each of the larvae, which are the problem causing parts. I didn't put pictures of the moths up or the eggs, though those can be useful to know too. And I arranged it, I thought, by some timeline, maybe I didn't, but the European corn borer tends to be the first thing to look out for in the season. And I believe that has a enviro weather model too, is that right?
Zsophia (01:28:29):
Yeah. Most of these will have an enviro weather model. I should also add that the majority of these don't over winter in Michigan, so they are going to be coming up on weather fronts and there is a thing called insect forecast and that one actually gives you data from our region and you can see as the insect is moving its way up North from the South and that's a great way to find out when you should be setting up traps and when you should be paying attention, which means that you don't have to do trapping, for example, for the entire season, only when you start seeing this migration coming up. And for that reason, I would also add that Purdue is a great resource. If you don't sign up for their newsletter, they have a vegetable hotline newsletter, I would recommend that you do that because in that, it's a weekly newsletter that gets sent your email and you can get reports of what's happening and there are South of us, so you will get the report that they are starting to see some of these migratory pests.
Ben (main) (01:29:35):
Yeah. The migratory ones that I'm aware of, and correct me if I'm wrong, corn earworm, Western bean cutworm and fall armyworm, perhaps.
Zsophia (01:29:43):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ben (main) (01:29:43):
That one migrates as well?
Zsophia (01:29:44):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ben (main) (01:29:45):
Okay. She had mentioned insect forecast. That's actually a website and that's the website insectforecast.com. And what they have, it looks just like a weather channel report where they've got a picture of the United States and a very simplified set of graphics like you might see in your morning meteorologist report and they tailor it to certain bugs.
Ben (main) (01:30:11):
But the general concept is, if you're looking at the whole country, and I'm going to make this you over there, so this would be the East Coast, this would be the West Coast and we'd be somewhere over here, where we're at right now. If you get a high pressure system in the Southeast and a low pressure system in the Southwest, their wind patterns rotate opposite directions. And when they're in that arrangement, they create this funneling effect from the South that grabs things, lifts it up into the higher air column and throws them up North. And when that air is traveling North and hits a cold front, everything falls, everything drops. And you get, essentially, an airdrop of every bug that was down there that got carried right where the rain falls, essentially. And you can see it.
Ben (main) (01:31:03):
In 2018, we saw, I think it was 2018, 2019, perhaps, it was really easy to see a couple of dates in June where corn earworm came in real hard, and it happened to also be one of those ... It was 2019. Because it was the year when we had so much water, in Michigan, at least, that field corn acres were way down, prevented plant was through the roof. So the only guys with corn on the landscape were the sweet corn growers. And with the only corn on the landscape and two really big flight events that came up from the South via these weather patterns, these pests had nowhere to go but sweet corn, it was an Armageddon of sweet corn or of this pest, corn earworm.
Zsophia (01:31:47):
Corn earworm, yeah.
Ben (main) (01:31:47):
Yeah.
Zsophia (01:31:47):
I would add that other insects are using this kind of migration as well, leaf hoppers are one of the notorious ones, so you can't be unaware of these weather patterns and what they might cause and to your farms. I think it's super important to know the resources and use them wisely and be able to predict when they arrive.
Ben (main) (01:32:13):
Zsophia, what can you tell us about the control of some of these caterpillars in sweet corn? And we talked a little bit about how they can arrive somewhat predictably, sometimes not, but what else should we know about it?
Zsophia (01:32:27):
Yeah. One thing that you just mentioned is this issue with the field corn, this relationship between sweet corn and field corn, I think, is worth touching on because field corn drives a lot of what's happening in sweet corn pest wise, right? When the field corn is silking, it's such a huge attractor of corn earworm that it basically dilutes out of what's happening in the sweet corn. You're not going to see a ton of corn earworm because everybody's busy laying eggs in the field corn. So I think that something to think about is what's going on around your farm? When is your sweet corn silking? When is the field corn silking? What's the relationship there? And then, come back and try to understand what's the threat of any of these occurring in your crop. And by and large, in Michigan, I find that corn earworm is the one that drives pest management in sweet corn.
Zsophia (01:33:27):
If you know how to manage that, you pretty much take care of all the other ones that are listed here because you have to spray so frequently, unfortunately, for corn earworm. Corn earworm has a very, very particular aspect of its biology. It's very interesting that it will only lay eggs on the silk. It likes fresh silk, so once the silk has gotten old, it doesn't really want to lay eggs anymore. It lays on the fresh silk and then the little larva that hatches, and they can hatch, if it's hot out there, in a couple of days, so it doesn't take very long for the larvae to hatch, but then, the little larva makes a journey from where it hatched into the tip of the ear through that silk that it was laid on. So it makes a little journey, it enters the tip of the ear and then it starts feeding, right? That's that larva that you find in the tip.
Zsophia (01:34:20):
And they're cannibalistic, so when you find one larva in the tip, it usually means that you have a corn earworm infestation. A lot of these other ones, you will find larvae that are entering from the side and there are multiple larvae, so if you do see that, it means that that's probably not corn earworm. Those are some of these other ones.
Zsophia (01:34:41):
Corn earworm, because the silk is growing so fast, you always have to have it covered with insecticide. It means that you have to sometimes spray every three, four days to cover that fresh silk. So even though you're spraying a really good insecticide that would be a able to kill the insect for a longer period of time, if that silk is growing and you have that fresh silk without any insecticide coverage, that's the important thing. You need to cover that bit of silk that has grown overnight and is now not covered by the insecticide. That's why, and these contact insecticides are the ones that really work for killing the corn earworms, so you have to use things like pyrethroids, although we do know of populations that are pyrethroid resistant, which means that you spray your pyrethroid insecticide and the insect is not dying. And in that situation, there are other insecticide options that you might want to consider. Yeah. Maybe I stop there or do you want me to continue on?
Ben (main) (01:35:48):
I wanted to add a little bit and get your take on this too. Corn earworm, if you didn't know, it has several different names. As a sweet corn grower, if that's your only big vegetable crop, you would know it maybe as corn earworm. If you also grew tomatoes, you may also know it as tomato fruit worm. If you grew cotton, you might know it as cottonball worm. And that last one, I think, is probably most important as it relates to resistance to insecticides because what we get doesn't over winter here, it has to be blown up from the South, a lot of cotton acres, a lot of field corn acres down there, two big crops, two big crops that have different spray windows than we have, get hit with insecticides before we get to hit them with insecticides and resistance can develop in populations in the South and blow up in different populations from the East Coast over to Texas, have just different characteristics and you never know what one we're going to get. And we might just end up with somebody else's resistance problem in any given year.
Zsophia (01:36:51):
Yeah, exactly. So you may not have caused the resistance, yet you end up with a population that's resistant to pyrethroids.
Ben (main) (01:36:59):
And at this point, we're lucky that they don't over winter so what we get ... Or maybe, I don't know if that's lucky or not, because I guess we could plan on it if we knew they stuck around, but they don't. Does anybody here use drop nozzles?
Zsophia (01:37:12):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ben (main) (01:37:13):
Dwight, and you back there. Would either of you care to describe your experience with those?
Speaker 8 (01:37:21):
Well, you can get it right on the ear.
Ben (main) (01:37:21):
You can get it right on the ear?
Speaker 8 (01:37:25):
I got a 24 inch drop nozzle. I got two [inaudible 01:37:29], so they're hitting them on both sides.
Ben (main) (01:37:31):
They're hitting them on both sides. So you got one drop spraying two directions onto the ears on either side of the row.
Speaker 8 (01:37:38):
[inaudible 01:37:38].
Ben (main) (01:37:38):
Uh-huh (affirmative). And how about you? You have a similar setup?
Speaker 9 (01:37:44):
[inaudible 01:37:44].
Ben (main) (01:37:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 9 (01:37:48):
[inaudible 01:37:48].
Zsophia (01:37:48):
Yeah.
Ben (main) (01:37:48):
So for a diverse vegetable grower who's got many different vegetable crops, I think that investing in some drop nozzles for one crop, sweet corn could be maybe something that ... It's like, "Oh, well, it's just the one crop." Have you used them in other crops and found them to work well in those situations too, or adjusting row spacing so that you can use it in other crops as well? Or you just have a dedicated sweet corn sprayer? Just one for the sweet corn. Yeah. You too, over there? Yeah. Okay. So a dedicated sweet corn sprayer would drop nozzles works well for you. Okay.
Zsophia (01:38:22):
Yeah. And I will add that, a lot of the times, that's what's not working for growers, when they can't control corn earworm, it's because of the coverage. They're just not getting good coverage on the ears. We always encourage those people that, before you jump to the conclusion that these resistant, you test whether you are getting the ear covered with water sensitive cards, you can staple them to the leaves that are near the ears or to the ears themselves and go over it with the sprayer. And then, if the water sensitive card usually turns blue or whatever color it indicates, then, you know that you have good coverage, but it's a cheap and foolproof way to test if the problem is with the coverage.
Ben (main) (01:39:06):
Anybody here use air blast sprayers for their sweet corn? Yeah? Okay. How have you felt about their performance in the corn?
Speaker 10 (01:39:16):
On a windy day, we were putting, you have to put a lot out, but we felt like it acts more like a shotgun than a rifle and we like how it peppers the plants.
Ben (main) (01:39:28):
Yeah. And how many rows are you hitting in one direction?
Speaker 10 (01:39:33):
12 rows.
Ben (main) (01:39:35):
Have you ever done this water soluble paper thing?
Speaker 11 (01:39:38):
Yes, we have.
Ben (main) (01:39:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 11 (01:39:46):
And we felt okay about it.
Speaker 10 (01:39:48):
We used it to determine that we needed a higher gallonage, so that's how we sort of calibrated it, and we think that some of it goes off target, but we felt like there was such high pressure that it was okay.
Ben (main) (01:40:04):
Okay. I had a colleague who did, he collaborated with a grower and set up some water soluble paper. I don't remember how many rows in, it was a 12 row set up, like what you got there, and I think he put them in the first row, sixth throw in the 12th row, perhaps, and he did tassel, silk, and then, I think a one of the basal leaves. And then, he lined them all up. And it seems like the adjustment of an air blast sprayer is really important so that you're not vaulting over the middle section or just hitting the first show really hard. But the middle, it seemed like it was really hard to get, row six at the silk seemed difficult to get. What do you think of that?
Speaker 11 (01:40:43):
I'm always worried about row 12.
Ben (main) (01:40:45):
Row 12? Okay. Yes, sir.
Speaker 11 (01:40:50):
On the drop nozzles, they should have about 125 PSI [inaudible 01:40:53].
Ben (main) (01:40:53):
125 PSI on the drops? Okay. Okay, good to know. Did you want to talk about BT varieties at all?
Zsophia (01:41:04):
Well, I think we're going to put it to the audience because I don't know who is interested in BT corn here.
Ben (main) (01:41:12):
Anybody here use BT varieties or interested in knowing about them? Yeah? You use them or you want to know about them? Either one? All right. Sweet corn, being the little redheaded stepchild of the field corn industry, has some GMO varieties. Okay? Same species as field corn field. Field corn's been GMO for a few years, more than a few years, so as the technology gets cheaper, it's been bred into sweet corn.
Ben (main) (01:41:42):
And you probably understand, a lot of the GM crops are primarily available in the highest acreage crops so that the companies have the best chance of return because it's an extremely expensive process to develop and all that. It's starting to trickle down into some of the specialty crops, sweet corn being one of them. It's effective, especially on late season corn earworm, but, another big but here, because corn earworm is pest of cotton and field corn, there's GM cotton and there's GM field corn with the same traits that kill corn earworm that we have in sweet corn.
Ben (main) (01:42:24):
And those have been around a lot longer. So down South where you've got perennial populations of corn ear worm both in field corn and cotton, resistance has formed, just like to insecticides. They're resistant to the resistance in corn. They've overcome it. These are genetically modified to have bug killing properties and the bugs have overcome them.
Ben (main) (01:42:46):
There's several sets or series of varieties that I can briefly explain here. There's the Seminis series, which is called the performance series. They've got a whole set of yellows, bicolors, whites. It has two proteins. And I guess you'd think about a protein as an ingredient in an insecticide. The protein is the ingredient that does the work. It says two ingredients, so it's like a premix. Okay. If anybody uses a premix insecticide, you know what I mean, it's got two ingredients in it. So this Seminis performance series has two ingredients premixed to help against corn earworm. And both of them have documented resistance in various parts to the United States, so it may or may not work in some years.
Ben (main) (01:43:36):
Syngenta has a few separate series of varieties. They've got one called Attribute I and it has a whole big set of bicolor, yellow, whites, SH2, synergistic. And it only has one protein or one ingredient that has this insect killing ability. And it is also the oldest one, so that one's got a lot more documented resistance in various parts of the country and not just the corn earworm, but also, I believe the European corn borer as well. That one's getting a little old, it probably wouldn't be the best choice if you had to use a BT variety, I might not do those.
Ben (main) (01:44:20):
The Attribute II series, it's got two actions. It's got two proteins, two ingredients. It's got that super old one that I just mentioned and it's got one of the newest ones. And it's the only one anywhere that is still effective across the entire United States. It's called ViP3A, that's the important one. That's the ingredient, that's the protein that is still active on corn earworm and almost everything else, including Western bean cutworm.
Ben (main) (01:44:49):
The other proteins that have been developed don't work on Western bean cutworm and they never developed resistance to it, it just simply never worked on them, but this ViP3A, this one, it does. It's a pretty good one. So Syngenta Attribute II series has that.
Ben (main) (01:45:07):
Now, there's a little hiccup. I don't know if you heard about this, maybe two years ago, in addition to having the insect killing proteins, the GM sweet corns also have some herbicide resistance built into them, Roundup-Readiness and the other one is called Liberty-Linked. And a couple years ago, there was an issue with the Attribute II series. There was a couple of varieties, they were supposed to be both Roundup-Ready and Liberty-Linked and they found, in one season, something was up and two of the varieties ended up not being Roundup resistant and there was some damage.
Ben (main) (01:45:46):
So they had to pivot and they changed the name of those varieties to Attribute Plus they're basically the same as Attribute II in terms of what kind of insect control they have, but they're only Liberty-Linked, they're not both Roundup-Ready and Liberty-Linked. So just a little difference there that came, a wrinkle over the last couple years.
Ben (main) (01:46:11):
And that's the info I have on that. I also have, I didn't print a bunch, I'm sorry, but I have a little cheat sheet with all the varieties I'm aware of up here if you'd like to look at it, it's called the Handy BT Trait Table. So the fellow back there who's raised his hand, if you want to come look at that, you welcome to. Was there any other questions you had for Zsophia or anything you wanted to add, Zsophia?
Zsophia (01:46:33):
Yeah. I just wanted to add to that that the way that you notice that there is resistance to the BT traits in particular is that when you open up the tip of the ear, you still see a larva in there, but it's very small, it's stunted in growth.
Ben (main) (01:46:51):
Oh.
Zsophia (01:46:51):
That's the giveaway that there's not very good resistance anymore of the plant to the insect. At that point, you have to start, then, combining sprays with the BT-
Ben (main) (01:47:08):
To get quite expensive.
Zsophia (01:47:09):
... and it can get quite expensive because these are not cheap seeds to begin with.
Ben (main) (01:47:14):
Yeah.
Zsophia (01:47:14):
And then, the other thing that I was going to add is, just from experience, I know that you need to check with whoever you're selling the corn to, that they're okay with the GM corn before you buy the seed.
Ben (main) (01:47:28):
Yeah. That's a great point. That's why we asked you all because I'm well aware that your markets really dictate what you can grow in most, I don't know, most, I don't think I'm going out on a limb on that. I would say most farm markets, your customer might say, "Is this GMO?" And they don't want it to be. So a lot of growers are like, "I just don't get into that. It's too expensive and my customers don't want it." And some other of you may not have that problem, so these could be a tool.
Ben (main) (01:47:56):
The growers I know who do use it, and maybe some of you are out there, because they're more expensive, would only buy the seed for the latest plantings which would have the most pressure late in the season. That's how I've seen them used best. All right, James had a question. If he was using a BT sprayable product like DiPel or something like that and the corn earworm was resistant to one of these proteins that's bred into the corn, would he notice a cross resistance to the sprayed BT? I don't know.
Zsophia (01:48:28):
I don't know either. I doubt it because there are completely different species and you're not, with the spray BT, you're actually spraying the entire bacillus, essentially, and with the traits that are in the corn, that's not the entire Bacillus, it's just a piece, a protein that's made by Bacillus. So I think that they're just rather different, but I may be wrong.
Ben (main) (01:48:58):
Okay. Any other questions for the good of the order before we close out?
Zsophia (01:49:03):
We haven't even touched on trapping.
Ben (main) (01:49:05):
Dang.
Zsophia (01:49:06):
Which I'm very, very sorry about, but go ahead.
Speaker 12 (01:49:10):
How do you register for [inaudible 01:49:12] credit?
Ben (main) (01:49:12):
What's that?
Speaker 12 (01:49:13):
How do you, you got a form up here you got to fill out for your [inaudible 01:49:16] credit?
Ben (main) (01:49:17):
Yeah. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. There was something about trapping.
Speaker 12 (01:49:23):
It's okay.
Ben (main) (01:49:23):
Okay. It is 4:00 o'clock, though. Maybe I-
Zsophia (01:49:26):
Sorry. If it's 4:00 o'clock, then we should wrap up.
Ben (main) (01:49:28):
Okay. We're going to wrap up. And sir, I have got more than an answer for you. You might regret it. All right, folks. I know this morning was a little bit of a snafu with the credits and I don't blame you. Someone moved your cheese and I get it. The Ohio guys don't have to worry about it, it's the same as ever. You write down your code, you bring it to one of the desks out there, I fail to remember which and you fill out a form. Same as before. The Michigan guys, you get ... Let me just try to tell you. Okay. If I can get some sound. Okay.
Ben (main) (01:53:05):
(Singing). All right. Okay. If you enjoyed this session, then COVID wasn't that bad because we wouldn't have thought of it without it.
Zsophia (01:53:10):
And when you say for sale, it doesn't cost money.
Ben (main) (01:53:13):
Yeah, it doesn't cost ... Well, you paid for registration, so in that way, maybe. Okay. Have a good expo, everybody.
Ben (main) (01:53:19):
That was a live rebroadcast from the Succotash Session at the Great Lakes Expo back in December in Grand Rapids, Michigan on the Vegetable Beet Podcast here. Later on this spring, we're putting together a set of prerecorded podcasts. We're not going live this year. We've got a few themes and interesting things that we're really excited to bring you, so stay tuned for that later on this spring at glveg.net/listen.
PART 4 OF 4 ENDS [01:53:47]
This transcript was exported on Jan 25, 2022 - view latest version here.
succotash session (Completed 01/22/22)
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