The 2014 Orr Agricultural Center Field Day presented by the Department of Crop Sciences at the University of Illinois will be held on Wednesday, July 16 at the Orr Center, which is located roughly halfway between Jacksonville and Quincy on Route 104, four miles west of the junction of Illinois Routes 104 and 107.
The first tour group will start out at 9:00 AM, with the second and third groups leaving the headquarters at about 9:20 and 9:40.…
Nearly all herbicide labels (soil-applied or postemergence) have rotational crop intervals that specify the amount of time that must elapse between herbicide application and planting a rotational crop. Adhering to these intervals is always important, but becomes particularly important with late-season herbicide applications or when soil moisture is limited. These intervals are established to reduce the likelihood that herbicide residues will persist in sufficient quantities to adversely affect the rotational crop. Some herbicide rotational restrictions are based solely on time,…
The University of Illinois weed science program would like to extend an open invitation to join us on July 30, 2014 for a field tour and discussions at our Palmer amaranth research site, located approximately ½ mile east of the intersection of county roads 14000 west and 3000 north (see Google map following this article) near the community of Union Hill. The tour will provide an excellent opportunity for farmers, input suppliers, members of the media,…
White mold of soybean (a.k.a. Sclerotinia stem rot), caused by the fungus Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, is a disease that can occur in the northern half of the state in cool, wet years. The most recent, widespread white mold epidemic in Illinois occurred during the 2009 season, where several fields in the northern half of the state were affected. In some of the northern-most areas of Illinois, white mold can be considered a more consistent problem.…
The European corn borer, once regarded as a major and consistent insect pest, is now only rarely observed in most commercial cornfields across the Corn Belt. William “Bill” Luckmann, longtime retired and well known entomologist, once mentioned that he had only observed two cornfields “totally destroyed” by insects — “once by chinch bugs and once by European corn borers.”
Gray, M.E. & W.H. Luckmann. 1994. Integrating the cropping system for corn insect pest management. Chapter 12,…
The program is set for the 33rd annual University of Illinois’ Northwestern Agricultural Research Center Field Day. The program will begin at 8 am on Tuesday, July 15th.
Buses will carry members of the public to different stops in the research center where campus-based specialists or Extension personnel will present the results of crop and pest management research and current recommendations.
Topics and speakers will include:
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On June 18, Robert Bellm, Commercial Agriculture Educator, observed Japanese beetles in Madison County, Illinois. Overall this season, I’ve received very few reports regarding this insect. With corn now rapidly growing into the late-whorl stage in many areas of the state, attention will soon begin to focus on protecting the pollination process from insect injury (silk clipping). Recently, some research was published concerning the effect that silk clipping by Japanese beetles had on the yield of corn.…
Joe Spencer, Associate Research Professor, Illinois Natural History Survey, indicates that his research crew observed a male western corn rootworm adult in his plots northeast of Urbana on June 26. Males generally emerge before the females. Earlier today (June 27), Joe and his students found five western corn rootworm adults in refuge corn. It took them about 1 1/2 hours to find these beetles, so, emergence is just underway. In addition, Joe has found significant root injury on several of the refuge plants.…
Herbicide-resistant waterhemp populations continue to expand into more areas of Illinois each season. Waterhemp has evolved resistance to herbicides encompassing more mechanisms of action than any other Illinois weed species, including resistance to inhibitors of acetolactate synthase (ALS), photosystem II (PSII), protoporphyrinogen oxidase (PPO), enolpyruvyl shikimate-3-phosphate synthase (EPSPS) and hydroxyphenyl pyruvate dioxygenase (HPPD). Not every individual waterhemp plant is resistant to one or more herbicides, but the majority of field-level waterhemp populations contain one or more types of herbicide resistance. …
There is some evidence that the “book values” that we have used for many years to calculate the amount of P and K removed by grain during harvest may no longer be accurate for the crops we produce today. The economic and environmental advantages of matching crop removal to replacement with fertilizer nutrients makes it important to have good removal numbers.
With funding from the Nutrient Research & Education Council (NREC) we are starting a new project in 2014 to try to get a better idea for how much nitrogen (N),…