New Webinar: Innovative Approaches in Phytopathometry and Epidemiology with a Focus on Corn Tar Spot

Tar spot in corn has become an important issue in the Midwest in the last few years. Dr. C.D. Cruz, associate professor from Purdue University, shares details about how to improve early disease detection, modeling, and estimation of disease severity in this webinar called, “Innovative Approaches in Phytopathometry and Epidemiology with a Focus on Corn Tar Spot.”

Dr. Cruz’s efforts to quantify disease and detect early infestations began with wheat blast, a disease that can devastate wheat crops in South America. The disease was typically reported by farmers once the wheat spike was infected. Unfortunately, once the infestation is apparent in the spike, the opportunity for effective treatment is very short. Dr. Cruz recognized that farmers needed more time to make decisions and implement treatments. He began using visual assessments conducted by people and photos taken using drones to identify methods for catching infections earlier. Results of these methods were similar and show promise for earlier disease detection and treatment.

As tar spot spread across the Midwest, Dr. Cruz noticed a similar opportunity to identify infestations earlier. Similar methods were used to follow disease progression, including both visual assessments by people and use of drones to collect photos to detect and monitor disease progression.

This tar spot disease observations are being used to create algorithms and disease models, which were tested in both greenhouse and field conditions. Algorithms were assessed by counting tar spot stroma to measure disease severity. This was tedious and time consuming for people, but can also be done with technology tools. Work continues to improve these algorithms, and there is potential to use drones and technology to assess disease severity. Using technology is more consistent than having multiple people estimating disease severity, and it is likely cheaper if fields are large.

This effort to monitor disease progression shows that tar spot is possible to detect early, before it becomes widespread and difficult to treat. Watch the full webinar to learn more about efforts to monitor and assess tar spot spread, observations and analysis, along with details about related research papers.

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