The goal of this one-year proposal is to establish in 2021 a sentinel plot program in Pennsylvania soybean fields. This project will be run collaboratively between Penn State’s Department of Entomology and Penn State Extension to provide soybean growers with a statewide assessment of insects and diseases active in soybean fields. The main goal of the program is to encourage growers to adopt Integrated Pest Management. The program will be directed and managed by John Tooker (Entomology), and executed by sixteen extension educators. We will scout about 27 fields in 21 counties (Bedford, Blair, Butler, Cambria, Centre, Crawford, Dauphin, Elk, Franklin, Lancaster, Lebanon, McKean, Mercer, Montgomery, Northumberland, Perry, Potter, Schuylkill, Somerset, Union, and York).

The specific objectives of our proposal are to:

1. Establish a network of soybean fields in Pennsylvania that will be scouted weekly for insect pest and disease populations.
2. Report weekly the results of our scouting efforts to statewide cliental via Penn State Extension-based outlets.

Weekly summary of scouting efforts to statewide cliental via Penn State Extension-based outlets

Updated August 26, 2021:

View uploaded report

There are numerous benefits of this project to soybean growers of Pennsylvania. First, during the project, growers will be exposed weekly to realistic, unbiased assessments of populations of insects and diseases in soybean fields. This exposure may seem unnecessary to some, but ample research has shown that soybean farmers over rely on insecticides and fungicides because they do not have a firm understanding of the threats that insects and fungal pathogens pose to their fields. Our scouting efforts of “typical” soybean fields, usually grown without insecticides and fungicides, provide qualified assessments of pest populations that have colonized fields around the state. We expect that these fields are representative of most in Pennsylvania and that growers can use our reports as indicators of what is active in their fields. After seeing our reports, we hope that growers will then seek to learn what is active in their fields. If they indeed see that pest populations are mild, then they will understand that insecticides and fungicides are not needed in most soybean fields. This first-hand experience can lead them to embrace scouting, which is the key to implementing Integrated Pest Management and the second benefit of our project, which is lowering production costs by allowing farmers to avoid using necessary inputs. A third benefit of our project is that we are educating growers on what pest species regularly colonize their soybean fields and which can become economically important. The greater familiarity that farmers have with pests, the better they will be able to assess the threat they pose and determine whether pesticide applications make economic sense. A fourth benefit of this project is that it better connects Penn State’s county-based extension staff to the soybean production cycle. Educators work with key growers to identify fields to scout and then visit these fields at least weekly. Fostering relationships with local farmers improves the effectiveness of extension educators and their regular visits to fields connect them to what is happening in soybean fields, including improving their pest assessment skills, which will then benefit other soybean growers in the region who may need their help diagnosing problems. Beyond helping individual growers, being more familiar soybean production and management will allow extension educators to better advocate for and explain the benefits and needs of typical management tactics, which the general public might not fully understand, such as benefits of GM crops, pesticides, and no-till, among others.