Project Overview

Reports

Commodities

• Agronomic: sunflower

Target Pests

Practices

• Pest Management: cultural control, disease vectors, economic threshold, forecasting, host resistance, pesticide application timing, pesticide resistance management, precision pesticide use, prevention

• Crop Production: application rate management, crop rotation, no-till, strip tillage, water management

• Production Systems: agroecosystems

• Sustainable Communities: local and regional food systems, public participation, urban agriculture

Approximately 85 to 90% of the 1.5 M acres of sunflower in the U.S. are planted in the North Central States. According to the National Sunflower Association (NSA), diseases are the most significant biological yield-limiting factor for sunflower production, yet few pathologists work on sunflower and until recently, limited Extension materials on sunflower diseases were available. As a consequence, disease identification and management consistently have been very challenging and some growers resort to a ‘spray and pray’ approach to disease management. To address this problem, the Sunflower Pathology Working Group (SPWG) was formed with support from the North Central IPM Center. The mission of the SPWG is to develop Extension materials, programs and events in multiple sunflower production regions that will help growers and stakeholders identify diseases and other pests as well as facilitate their ability to use IPM. For FY2024, we designed four objectives, (1) Maximize skills, collaborations and communications to improve sunflower disease identification, management and IPM, (2) Facilitate an increase of practitioners, growers and stakeholders to identify plant diseases, (3) Facilitate an increase in Spanish-speaking populations of practitioners, growers and stakeholders to identify plant diseases, and (4) Facilitate sunflower IPM learning among students and future practitioners. For objective 1, methods will include reading and discussing “The Trust Edge” by David Horsager, maintaining communication through the ‘Helia’ group and participating in two meetings. For objectives 2 and 3, we plan to create 16-card diagnostic series tentatively titled “Plant Disease Diagnosis” in English and “Diagnóstico de enfermedades en plantas” in Spanish, respectively. Both publications will provide growers and other practitioners with a step-by-step guide needed to most effectively diagnose diseases (what tools to bring to the field?, questions to ask the farmer?, how to take a sample?, etc). Additionally, Objective 3 will also contribute to the DEIA focus of the NCIPM Center. For Objective 4, we will build on previous efforts to educate students and future practitioners by developing a third APS Plant Disease Lesson (Plant Health Instructor), tentatively titled “Verticllium Wilt”. To accomplish all the proposed objectives, we anticipate partnering with the NSA, whose membership will provide the SPWG feedback and guidance on current and future projects. Ultimately, we believe our impact will be to eliminate the ‘spray and pray’ approach to sunflower disease management and replace it with an IPM approach. This proposal is designed to help fulfill the mission of the NCIPMC to support and promote IPM practices that will improve crop system sustainability by increasing farm profitability and reducing environmental impacts using IPM practices, as well as developing systems that can rapidly identify new re-emerging or resistant pests and minimize their impact.  We also anticipate impacts of increasing usage of IPM at a state, regional, national or international scale.

(1) Maximize skills, collaborations and communications to improve sunflower disease identification, management and IPM

(2) Facilitate an increase of practitioners, growers and stakeholders to identify plant diseases

(3) Facilitate an increase in Spanish-speaking populations of practitioners, growers and stakeholders to identify plant diseases

(4) Facilitate sunflower IPM learning among students and future practitioners.