Sudden Death

Soybean Farmers Battle Crop Disease in Midwest
Associated Press, August 24, 2000

It started with a single brown leaf on a soybean plant, but before long Mike Brocksmith had an entire patch of brown in one of his soybean fields. Sudden death syndrome has struck soybean crops across Knox County and throughout the region, cutting yields as much as 20 percent in some fields. “It's sure a wake-up call when your beans start dying in August,” Brocksmith, 42, said Friday as he walked about his fields, pointing out stricken plants that could leave him with thousands of dollars in damages. The syndrome is nearly impossible to prevent and harder to kill. “When you see this, it's a done deal,” said Chuck Mansfield, an extension agronomist at Purdue University, assessing a spot of damaged leaves in Brocksmith's crop. “It's all over.” An estimated 80 percent of Knox County's soybean fields show signs of the fungal disease, said Jerry Nelson, Purdue University extension educator for Knox County, about 50 miles north of Evansville. “It's more widespread in the county than it's ever been, and it's more severe,” Nelson said.

Farmers in other southern Indiana counties, western Kentucky and southern Illinois also report damage from the disease, but it's nearly impossible to assess the damage at this point. “We won't know for sure until we harvest it,” Nelson said. Sudden death syndrome was first observed in Arkansas in 1971, but was not identified in Indiana until 1985. It also occurs in Illinois, Kentucky, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Kansas and Tennessee. “Some years it can be a fairly major problem and some years you'll see very little of it,” said Todd Pfeiffer, professor and soybean breeder at the University of Kentucky. The disease is caused by a soilborne fungus that affects the lateral roots of soybean plants. Significant rainfall - such as what was seen in the region in July - can activate the problem. “Mother Nature plays a big, big role in triggering this disease,” Mansfield said. Although it's called sudden death, the disease is there long before the symptoms arise. “It's a slow death, but it kind of appears suddenly and keeps creeping across the field,” Brocksmith said.