Veltyma, Revytek, Delaro, and Delaro Complete are all sold out!
(OR VERY CLOSE TO IT…)

While we love each of those fungicides, the good news is there are many others we also love, AND most are less expensive! Bayer and BASF have done a fantastic job marketing their products to the point that supply isn’t keeping up with demand, but FMC and Syngenta are in great shape on supply, and even BASF and Bayer have other fungicides, in some cases with the same active ingredients, so let’s run through your AVAILABLE options so you can make this year’s crop great!

First of all, we encourage you to add Nutex EDA to any fungicide.

It only costs around $3 per acre, and in our side-by-side tests it is commonly adding $20 to $30 in gross income. Nutex will help get fungicides into the plant faster and more efficiently, and it contains a little zinc as a foliar fertilizer boost, as well.

WHEN IT COMES TO CORN FUNGICIDE, THERE ARE A COUPLE OF THINGS I’D LIKE YOU TO KEEP IN MIND…

  • Tar spot, tar spot, tar spot! In some areas, this is all anyone is talking about right now. If you want to stop tar spot you should spray twice, right before tassel and then 3 weeks later. Make sure you include a strobilurin, as products like Headline and Quadris have great activity on tar spot, and they should be part of any premix or tankmix.
  • “Five feet, time to treat.” BASF has been saying this for the last couple of years, and as a general statement I think that’s a good idea. However, if you are mostly concerned about gray leaf spot, southern rust, and northern corn leaf blight, that could be a little on the early side. It all depends on the year and the disease pressure in your area. Personally, I like it when we can do the application ourselves with our sprayer, so the five-foot timing sounds good to me. However, if you’ve had good success in the past calling in a plane or a helicopter at tassel, I’d probably stick with that if you are trying to get by with just one treatment.

FUNGICIDES FOR CORN & SOYBEANS:

MY BEST ALTERNATIVE: Lucento (5.5 oz) plus Acadia (3 oz).
Total cost after rebate is around $17. I would absolutely put this mix against any 3 mode of action product on almost any disease. We used this last year on both corn & beans on our farm.

SYNGENTA LOVERS: Miravis Neo (13.7 oz) or Trivapro (13.7 oz).
Miravis Neo is better on tar spot than Trivapro, but both are great options on almost every other disease in corn and soybeans. If you want a Syngenta product, Miravis Neo is probably the direction I would steer you.

BASF LOVERS:
Many people rave about BASF products. If you are in that camp, take Priaxor (4 oz) and mix it with Tilt (4 oz). Total cost is about $18. Compare this to Trivapro and Miravis Neo in the chart below:

Also, if you love Veltyma and Revytek, keep in mind that Priaxor has two of the active ingredients from Revytek and one from Veltyma. Plus, the Priaxor/Tilt mix is about half the price of Veltyma and two-thirds the price of Revytek.

BAYER LOVERS: If you want to stay in the Bayer Plus program, I have two excellent options for you.
  1. Stratego YLD (2.3 oz) plus Propulse (3.5 oz).

    Plus, the Priaxor/Tilt mix is about half the price of Veltyma and two-thirds the price of Revytek.

  2. Propulse (7 oz) plus Acadia (3 oz).

This will cost a little more ($18 before rebate), but it should be BETTER than Delaro Complete because it will give you almost twice as much ILeVO and still cost LESS money than Delaro Complete!

NO GREEN STEMS: Lucento (5.5 oz)
If you don’t like green stems, Lucento is the product of choice when used without mixing in a strobilurin. Plus, Lucento contains an SDHI and TopGuard, the same triazole fungicide in Xyway.

It’s the longest-lasting fungicide we know of, and it is excellent when it comes to disease control. Lucento only costs about $14 after rebate.

INEXPENSIVE BUT REALLY GOOD: Brixen (15 oz).
For about $11.50 per acre, you will get the active ingredients from Domark (good on sclerotinia white mold and a bunch of other diseases) and Quadris (strobilurin chemistry). The advantage to Brixen, other than low cost, is it has a really high rate of the strobilurin, equivalent to 9 oz of Quadris at the 15 oz rate of Brixen. That means more activity on certain diseases like tar spot and increased plant health benefits.

SCLEROTINIA WHITE MOLD SOYBEAN FUNGICIDES

  • Endura is definitely the best white mold fungicide, but at $45 per acre we only use it in our historically bad white mold spots, so about 10 percent to maybe 20 percent of our soybean acres. When sprayed at R1, there is nothing better than Endura.
  • Domark (5 oz), Topsin (20 oz), or a combination of both is a great way to prevent white mold. Even if you spray both Domark and Topsin together at the full rate, it’s less than $15 per acre. On our farm, we spray this combo about three weeks after we use Endura in the areas we believe will be heavily hit by white mold.
  • Our best piece of advice in soybeans is to spray Cobra as soon as you see the first flower in the field. The 6 oz white mold rate only costs about $5. Then, use a different fungicide mode of action every two or three weeks after that. White mold is by far the worst disease we face in soybeans, so stay ahead of it!

WHEAT FUNGICIDES (UP TO AND INCLUDING FLAG LEAF)

  • While old Tilt is very inexpensive and it’s definitely better than doing nothing, investing a few more dollars in a better fungicide will likely give you a great return on investment. Our advice is to pick a two- or three-mode-of-action fungicide or mix your own. Most of the fungicides listed above in corn or soybeans can also be used in wheat. Nexicor wasn’t listed earlier, as it is not labeled in corn or beans, but we like Nexicor in wheat since it has 3 modes of action and is fairly inexpensive.
  • Most farmers we work with use a half rate of fungicide at herbicide timing. That makes sense since the wheat is so small. At flag leaf timing, our advice is to use a full rate.
     
  • Flag leaf applications are not as common as herbicide or heading treatments, but spraying a fungicide at flag leaf will probably give you the best return. If you don’t normally spray at that time, our recommendation is to try at least a few acres this year. I know it seems close together to spray both at flag leaf and then again at heading, but this approach usually pays off quite well.

WHEAT FUNGICIDES AT HEADING

  • You can’t use a strobilurin fungicide at heading due to much greater risk of DON/vomitoxin.
  • Miravis Ace and Prosaro Pro are the most expensive, but so far they also look the best in terms of disease control and yield gain.
  • If you don’t want to spray at heading, we encourage you to at least invest $2 in old Folicur/generic tebuconazole. This won’t be as good as the others on fusarium head blight, but it is still very effective on most rust species.

THIS IS BY NO MEANS A COMPLETE LIST. THIS IS JUST TO GIVE YOU AN IDEA OF THE MANY CHOICES YOU HAVE. IF YOU CAN’T GET THE FUNGICIDE YOU ORDERED, DON’T WORRY. THERE ARE LOTS OF OTHER GREAT PRODUCTS OUT THERE!

Call us at 1-800-274-3389 or reach out to your local Hefty Agronomist to determine the best options for your farm.