IN MY OPINION…

HERE ARE THE 3 MOST IMPORTANT THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT FUNGICIDES.

1. SCOUTING IS NOT THE KEY TO SUCCESS.

I know it seems strange for an agronomist to tell you that scouting isn’t important, but that’s absolutely the case here. By the time you see a disease in your crop, you’re too late! Yield is already lost! That’s the frustrating thing with fungicides. You have to pull the trigger before you know whether or not it will pay. Personally, I like dealing with weeds and insects better, because I can see them, spray them, and then watch them die. With fungicide, you spray it, and then you just watch your crop continue to look good. It’s not as satisfying – until harvest, that is. If you ever leave check strips, which we often do, you will then see the difference with the combine.

When deciding whether or not to use a fungicide, I encourage you to look at:

WEATHER. More rain means more disease.
CROP VALUE. High yield or high price makes fungicide more likely to pay than low yield and low price. Speaking of prices…
COST OF THE TREATMENT. If you are already spraying a herbicide or insecticide, you don’t have to pay for an extra trip across the field when you add a fungicide. There are also super-cheap ($2) options all the way up to fantastic products that cost $20 or more, so you can switch products based on your chance for ROI, which leads me to…

2. SPRAYING ANYTHING IS ALMOST ALWAYS BETTER THAN NOTHING, ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU HAVE 2 OR 3 MODES OF ACTION..

If the choices are exhausting because there are so many different products available, just pick something. Fungicides today are great, and we usually see decent yield gains when products are used correctly. The more modes of action you use, the more broad-spectrum your control and the less chance you’ll have for resistance concerns. However, like I said above, if you need to get by cheap, there are options for you, and if you are worried about an impending disaster, there are amazing fungicides that cost more money.

3. 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, as it contains fulvic acid and a little zinc as a foliar fertilizer boost.

CORN FUNGICIDE COMMENTS:

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.
BASF has been saying, “5 FEET, TIME TO TREAT” for the last few years, and as a general statement, I think that’s a good idea. However, if you are mostly concerned about grey 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 5-foot timing sounds good to me. However, if you’ve had great success in the past calling in a plane or a helicopter or a drone at tassel, I’d probably stick with that if you are trying to get by with just one treatment.

FUNGICIDES FOR CORN & SOYBEANS:

3 MOA: You can either buy premixed 3-mode-of-action products like Revytek, Trivapro, Miravis Neo, or Delaro Complete; or you can mix your own by combining fungicides such as Priaxor plus Tilt or Lucento plus Acadia. For the most broad-spectrum control with the fewest concerns for resistance, one of these options is best.
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 TopGuard, the same triazole fungicide in Xyway, and an SDHI. TopGuard/Xyway is the longest-lasting fungicide we know of, and it is excellent when it comes to disease control. Lucento only costs about $15 after rebate.
INEXPENSIVE, BUT REALLY GOOD: Brixen (15 oz) or TopGuard EQ (5 oz). With Brixen, for about $12 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 ounces of Quadris at the 15 oz rate of Brixen. That means more activity on certain diseases like tar spot and increased plant health benefits. What we like about TopGuard EQ (for about $7 per acre after rebate) is it has TopGuard (see above) plus the active ingredient from Quadris and its plant health benefits, not to mention the fact it is easily the cheapest “great” fungicide option this year.

SCLEROTINIA WHITE MOLD SOYBEAN FUNGICIDES:

Endura is definitely the best white mold fungicide. However, at a cost of $39 per acre, we only use it on our historically bad white mold spots on our farm, so about 10% to maybe 20% of our soybean acres. When sprayed at R1, there is nothing better than Endura.
Next on the list is the new, 2-mode-of-action Viatude. It’s a premix of the active ingredients from Aproach and Proline. While we’ve never liked Aproach much on white mold, it at least has some activity. Proline on the other hand, has always been quite good on white mold, and this combination is even better. Viatude will run in the mid-$20s for cost.
Domark (5 oz), Topsin (40 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 rates, it’s only around $20 per acre to get 2 modes of action. On our farm, we often spray this combo about 3 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-ounce white mold rate only costs about $3. Then, use a different fungicide mode of action every 2 or 3 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):

Yes, old Tilt is inexpensive, but if you use anything, literally anything else side by side, you will see why Tilt gets used less and less each year. Our advice is to pick a 2- or 3-mode-of-action fungicide or mix your own. Most of the fungicides listed on the previous page 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. Put it next to Tilt and you will quickly become a Nexicor fan.
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-timing 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 is probably the best, but if Prosaro Pro is number two, it isn’t by much. These two products lead the way in terms of disease control and yield gain.
If you don’t want to spray at heading due to cost, 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.