This season, sugarcane aphid was first spotted close to the same time as last year. Generally, populations were slow to build, but this year a number of growers were prepared to treat with Sivanto Prime, which is available through an…

Southern rust of corn, caused by the fungus Puccinia polysora, was confirmed by the University of Kentucky Plant Disease Diagnostic Laboratory (PDDL) for the first time in 2018 from a sample collected in Logan County. This is the first confirmation…

Last week, the first sugarcane aphids (SCA) of the year for Kentucky were found in Woodford County on sweet sorghum.  While only 5% of the leaves in the field were infested, some had over 700 SCA, meaning SCA has likely…

Two weeks ago, I reported in KPN about a suspected western bean cutworm egg mass that was collected by a field scout in Owensboro. This large egg mass was located on the upper leaf surface of the upper leaf of corn.…

This week, a suspicious egg mass was found in a Daviess County corn field by a consultant who was scouting the field. The tentative identification of the egg mass is western bean cutworm (WBC), a pest of corn and garden…

Farmers are annually concerned about corn disease, and this year will be no exception. Corn is moving through growth stages quickly, and the warm, humid weather in many parts of Kentucky has been conducive for foliar disease development. Fungicides are…

A number of diseases that affect heads of small grain crops have been observed in Kentucky over the last few weeks. Fusarium Head Blight One of the “usual suspects” that is no stranger to Kentucky is Fusarium head blight (a.k.a.…