Tar spot was recently confirmed in some Iowa crop fields.
Meaghan Anderson, extension agronomist with Iowa State University, says the disease was found in Tama and Jasper counties. “Totally in-line with what we would expect from the infection early,” she said, “individual lesions found on one leaf of a V7 corn plant.”
She tells Brownfield the detection came a few weeks earlier than normal. “We’ve got corn that’s at the right stage that it could be infected, along with a lot of moisture to splash things up onto the leaves in some of that early growth, maybe in a way that we haven’t seen in the past several years.”
Anderson says growers need to prioritize scouting during the growing season.
