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Soybean producers will be particularly interested in Tour H at the Milan No-Till Field Day - Soybean Disease Control.

"Disease control talks are always popular with producers," said Dr. Blake Brown, director of the University of Tennessee Research and Education Center at Milan. The Center is home to the popular Milan No-Till Field Day, which is celebrating its 24th program.

"A disease can devastate a crop and jeopardize a producer's entire season," Brown said. "The talks on Tour H will present the latest research information available regarding disease management."

The tour will include a discussion on Asian soybean rust. One of the speakers will be UT Extension's well-known plant pathologist Melvin Newman. Newman, whose work is based in Jackson, will describe UT Extension's action plan for identifying and dealing with Asian soybean rust. "We have trained an alliance of First Detectors," Newman said. "These are professional or semi-professional people who routinely work with soybeans out in the fields including Extension agents, seed and chemical company representatives, consultants, and many others who want to learn how to identify soybean rust." Newman said the First Detectors were trained in March 2005 to recognize all the major soybean diseases that occur in Tennessee, including soybean rust. Their training included how to collect suspect samples and where and how to deliver them for confirmation.

"If soybean rust is identified, producers will have to react very quickly to spray fungicides to protect their soybean crop from yield losses," Newman said.

Other tour stops will feature discussions on soybean nematode management, charcoal rot, and soybean seed decay. Idris Abdi, a research associate with USDA Agricultural Research Service, and Allen Wrather, a plant science professor from the University of Missouri, will discuss their data which shows that changing from a no-tillage situation to a tilled scenario can increase soybean cyst nematode reproduction eight fold. Other topics will be covered by additional experts from the USDA-ARS.

Controlling frogeye leaf spot will be the focus of a talk by Bob Williams and Philip Shelby, experts with UT Extension.

The complete soybean disease control tour is expected to require about 1 hour and 20 minutes. Visitors are encouraged to schedule their time to allow for several tours.

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Contact: Patty McDaniels, (865) 974-7141