Reflections on a Career

It has been said that the average person will have three careers during their working years. That is to say three different paths of making an income for an individual or a family. My journey was different. I had one career that covered 43.5 years. And now its over.

After graduating from Oregon State University in 1976, I wasn't really sure where my degree in Agronomic Crop Science would take me. As it turned out, my family and I have gone from Western Oregon to SW Washington; then to South Central Idaho, followed by Central North Dakota. We finally landed in the Skagit Valley in Washington in 1990. Of all the places we have been, the longest duration has been in the Skagit Valley, the place we call home.

I can say that one constant in all this travel is that farmers are about the same from the West Coast to the Midwest. The methods of farming and the crops involved may be different but the farmers themselves are just as dedicated and driven. It has been my privilege to have worked with some of the best people in the farming industry.

As Willy Nelson would say: "turn out the lights, the party's over." Wishing all my friends and associates the best that life can offer.

Biology in Crop Production

On November 14^th and 15^th, 2018, the Pacific Northwest Vegetable Association held its annual conference in Kennewick, WA. What I found to be very interesting in this year’s presentations were two presentations on how bacteria operate in the soil as well as on the plants.

 The first was on the importance of soil-borne bacteria and fungi as they relate to soil structures, water movement, and plant development. It was very easy to understand that this soil microbe life force enables the soil to be porous enough to allow water and oxygen movement. Without these two components a plant would have a hard time living. Also, the presentation touched on the importance of having the bacteria act on soil nutrients making them available to the plant. It’s not just background nutrients that are made available but also the synthetic fertilizer that is added to the soil.  Having a healthy soil with a good biological population means you will get the most out of your fertilizer investment.

The other aspect of a strong soil biological system is how they can protect your plants from soil borne diseases. As bacteria colonize on your plant’s root system they take up the space where pathogens would like to be. This is called competitive exclusion. Basically, there are more good guys protecting the wagon train keeping the bad guys away.

There are also both bacteria and fungi that can actually kill some diseases.

Species of Trichoderma fungi are very effective in killing pathogens such as rhizoctonia, fusarium, and phythium. The Trichoderma fungi are often found in combination with plant growth promoting rhyizobacteria, PGPR’s, so plant vigor is enhanced while protection from pathogens is also taking place.

Ag Tech Services, LLC, has been promoting the use of PGPR/s for the past 14 years. Recently we have been using a bacteria/Trichoderma mix to suppress diseases with very positive results. Let us know if you are interested in trying this combination on your crops for 2019, by contacting us at agtech@comcast.net

Changes in Farming Over 42 Years

As I look back over the past 42 years in the ag supply business, I can see the many advancements we have made as an industry. Seeing where we are now compared to where I started shows a lot of change.

World Population: In 1976 the world population was 4.1 billion with a density of 28 people per square kilometer. Today, in 2018, the world population is 7.6 billion with a density of 58 people per square kilometer. We have nearly doubled our population and more than doubled our density in just 42 years. It is easy to see that as these numbers increase our land base for food production decreases. The food production industries have a world of challenges in their future. I hope it doesn’t come down to the “have and have nots” because in that scenario no one wins.

Crop Protection Companies: When I started my career, there were about a dozen companies providing crop protection products for farmers. Today the big three are Bayer/Monsanto, Syngenta/Chem China, and Dow/Dupont. These three mega entities have combined sales of over $61 billion. There are a few others but these three rule the roost. I really don’t think it helps the end user by having so much of the market controlled by so few players.

Understanding How Plants Work: We have come light years from where we started in 1976. There is very little “broad base” use of fertilizers today as there was before. We understand more of how plants utilize certain nutrients and how to apply what the plant needs more precisely than ever before. We understand that a tall vine is not always the most productive one. It is a simple statement that really does apply to most crops.

American Farmers: I can only speak to what I have seen and have heard; the American farmer is the most efficient food producer in the world. This says a lot about our ag history and our ag future. I can only hope that when my grandchildren get to my age they can say the same.

 
Overall: I can’t complain. Naturally there have been ups and downs but overall I can’t see myself doing anything elso by my chosen profession. We will leave marks behind us from the lives we have lived. I just hope mine have been more positive than negative.

The more we understand soil, the more we succed in ag

Sometimes you run across an article that just needs to be shared. The following article by John Sitka was forwarded to me and I felt it needed to be shared even further. We have obtained permission from the author and AGDAILY to republish this in our blog.

Published: November 10, 2017, in AGDAILY

 

In agriculture, as with anything, we must always be careful about what we ask for. This is true with many complex subjects. It’s not always about the answers we receive, but the questions we ask.

For several decades producers had asked for higher yields; not higher profits or improved soil that would sustain their operations into the future. It is not surprising that after decades of asking for higher yields we find ourselves with degraded soil, slim profit margins, and yes, higher yields. While every producer is interested in producing a good crop each year, the conversation in agriculture is changing from the pursuit of high yields, to one of restoring the soil and profit margins.

Many have assumed that restoring the soil’s capacity to function and the profitable production of crops are mutually exclusive. We all know it costs money to apply conservation practices to the land to control erosion. However, we have mistaken soil erosion as a problem, when it is actually a symptom of a larger problem. For many years we have been chasing soil downhill, all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, because we did not question things deep enough to identify the actual problem. The problem was dysfunctional soil, manifested as erosion. We mistook a symptom (soil erosion) for the disease (dysfunctional soil) and so did not discover the cure (restoring soil health) … until now.

Now, we have correctly determined that the reason soil and crop nutrients are leaving the field is because the soil lacks the capacity to infiltrate water and cycle nutrients. The soil is no longer functioning as designed. Properly functioning soil absorbs water and cycles nutrients so neither leave the field except through transpiration of water through the leaves of living plants or nutrients in the grain. The most provocative part of this revelation is that improving soil function reduces input costs, which increases the margin of profit. The more we understand about how the soil is designed to function and manage it accordingly, the more the soil does for us. The soil allows plants to convert air, water, and sunlight into the commodities that can be sold in the marketplace.

In our quest for higher yields, we have been given control over many variables of crop production. Modern agriculture is about controlling weeds, controlling insects, controlling soil moisture, controlling plant nutrients –controlling whatever nature throws at us. But these controls can come with a cost. By changing our understanding of the soil from a place where we supply and control things to where we allow life in the soil to supply and control things is how profitable production can take place. Pesticides, fertilizers, and other agricultural technologies are tools, and as such, are not to be revered nor condemned, but can be applied to either facilitate or suppress the biological processes in the soil. The biology of the soil is always working to find the most efficient way to maintain itself and its indispensable partners: living plants. Living plants are the mechanism for air, water and sunlight to be transformed into food for the soil as well as food for us. By changing the way we think about soil, we can utilize the soil’s capacity to regenerate itself and support plants to our advantage.

Now that we know better how the soil functions as a biological system, we need to learn how to harness that understanding to power the production of our crops. We need to ask for ways to get our soil back in peak condition so it can capture and cycle water and nutrients as efficiently and profitably as possible. That way, any inputs we may choose to add to the system will not only improve the capacity of the soil to function, but will return the most bushels for our buck. Instead of only asking researchers and agricultural suppliers for higher yields, perhaps we should be asking for ways to restore the soil that will sustain both short- and long-term crop production, and leave the soil better than when we found it.

Understanding how the soil functions as a biological system is the future of agriculture. A future where agriculture can be profitable and productive without the imminent specter of regulations developed to address any adverse impacts on the environment. By restoring the soil to allow it to do its job more efficiently, producers can be more productive, proactive, and profitable, while reducing the footprint of agriculture on the environment.

Agriculture needs to ask for something better than bushels. We need to ask for a future with fully functioning soil, which is something we can all agree on.

Jon Stika is a soil scientist who has worked with the North Dakota Soil Conservation Committee and NDSU’s Dickinson Research and Extension Center. He is also the author of “A Soil Owner’s Manual: How to Restore and Maintain Soil Health.”

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After the Harvest, Now What?

The busy time of year for anyone in the Ag supply business normally runs from March through October. As you can see, it is basically planning through harvest. So with two-thirds of the year behind us, what do we do for the final one-third?

November through February is meeting and education time for us. In November we attend the Pacific Northwest Vegetable Association (PNVA) meeting. This day and a half conference packs a lot of information into a short amount of time.

Mid December gives us the Far West Agribusiness Association Winter Conference (FWAA). This organization covers the Pacific Northwest region, OR, WA, and Idaho. This year’s meeting is in Boise, Idaho, so we need to allow some travel time. The FWAA presents material that covers various cropping structures but also some political and business information that is needed in today’s Ag market.

The third and fourth weeks of the New Year will be busy with two important meetings to attend. The third week will find us in Houston, Texas, attending an international meeting of one of the companies we work with. Attendees from all over the world explain product trials that worked and those that didn’t work. One thing is certain; we always learn something while we are there.

The fourth week of January is the Washington/Oregon Potato Conference. For many years the two states had separate meetings until they put their similarities together for the sake of efficiency. It is very well organized and the meetings are very informative.

So as you can see, when the physical work is done for us, the learning continues. We do spend a lot of money and time away from our families to keep ourselves up to speed. It is what we do for our Ag industry and we do it gladly.

Attack of the Killer Potato Vines

Those of you who know me understand that I do a fair amount of traveling during the growing season. Naturally, when you travel anything can happen.

Long story short, I wound up taking a fall in a potato field located about 20 miles from Burley, Idaho, a couple weeks ago. Nothing broken, but I have a really bad sprain of my right knee. So I am 700 miles from home and can’t walk out of the field without a great deal of help. Whereas I couldn’t walk, I also couldn’t drive my rental vehicle, get on an airplane, or get on the shuttle from the airport to go home. This created a 1400 mile round trip for my wife to come get me. She is not fond of long-distance driving, so I’m glad she was able to do this. It’s amazing how much better I felt mentally when she walked into my hotel room.

It would be easy to dwell on the hardships of the incident but I would rather concentrate on the positive things that came from this fall. The fertilizer dealership that asked me to see this field went out of their way to help me. They drove me to the hospital and checked on me several times when I was in my hotel room. They even contacted me on my way home to make sure I was all right. I could tell their concern was real.

The hospital staff was extremely caring in the way they allowed me to take the time to cancel my car rental by waiting patiently for me to finish my business before doing the x-rays. With more compassion than I have seen at other hospitals, they bent over backwards for my comfort.

The hotel staff was absolutely awesome! Not only did they select a room for me that was close to the main desk, they also brought my dinner to me. My knee was about three times its normal size and when I called the front desk for some ice they brought it to me gladly. They went so far as to check on me periodically just to see if I wanted anything. It is important to note that this was not the hotel I have stayed in every month for several years. That hotel was booked for my original night’s visit, so I was staying in a completely new place.

Some people would look at all of this and say they were just doing their job. I saw it very differently. What I saw was people who didn’t know me but still wanted to make me comfortable. They didn’t care if my politics was left, right, blue, or red. They just wanted to help a person in distress.

In this world of divisions and taking sides, it is good to see that helping someone comes first and politics, race, or religion comes much later. There are a lot of good people out there and I think if we all open our eyes a bit wider we can see them. Once we see them, let’s be one of them.

Taking the Bite Out of High Salt Soils

The soils of the Skagit Valley are noted for being very fertile. After 27 years of pulling soil samples in the valley, I would agree with this statement. However, along with the good, you will always have some bad. One of the most prevalent challenges in our valley is high salt. This can happen from fields being very close to a salt water bay, poorly drained soils with high levels of nitrate nitrogen, or fields close to dairies where liquid manure has been applied over the years. There is no fault in these soil conditions, sometimes it just works out that way. 

That being said, it is possible to help a crop get through the stress of trying to grow under high salt conditions. The picture above is of two corn plants grown in separate fields. The plant on the left is from the untreated field and the plant on the right is from the treated field. The two fields are separated by a ditch and have always been farmed the same.

Without going into a tremendous amount of over explanation, I can say the treated planting had a pre plant incorporated combination of a high-carbon liquid product with a soil surfactant. The treatment in furrow at planting was a biological inoculant and a salicylic acid product to enhance root structure and increase root length. After 11 days from planting, it looks like the program is working so far. We will do another picture and post in a couple of weeks.

Set Up for Success

While going through the history of our blog we discovered that we had more visits to the blog post concerning skin set on potatoes than any other. We decided it’s time to revisit that blog but also post a new one on what it takes to set up a potato crop for good skin set.

The process of skin set, the thickening of the outer-most cells on the potato, is a natural occurrence when the potato plant has completed the movement of sugars from the leaves to the tubers. It is part of the maturing process that will keep the tuber from degrading during storage. This all seems like an easy task but in the Skagit Valley skin set can take several weeks after the plants have died.

A few things can be done early in the plant development to help the maturing process:

1.     Do not apply nitrate forms of nitrogen early in the plant’s development. This has a negative effect on the plant by pushing top growth and reducing root development.

2.     Get as much calcium, boron, silica, and magnesium into the plant as possible. Start early and go long! These elements will enhance cell wall strength, reduce stress, and increase photosynthesis all of which are critical to keep plant top growth in check.

3.     If at all possible, use a water surfactant pre-plant and during the growing season to move both irrigation and rain more efficiently. We have been using a product called Integrate 80 with a great deal of success. It will move water both vertically and horizontally creating a better water distribution path.

These are a few ideas that you can try to help your potatoes achieve a stress-free crop. If you follow through with these three ideas and use the finishing program, also posted, I’m confident you will be satisfied with the end results.

A Gathering of Potato Growers

We attended the Washington-Oregon Potato conference in Kennewick, WA, on January 24^th and 25^th to learn from some of the best growers and researchers in the industry.

Did you know that the combined acreage of potatoes for Washington and Oregon amounts to 20% of the nation’s total? Washington alone grows about 170,000 acres per year with Oregon in at 40,000 acres. The vast majority of the crop is grown on the east side of the Cascade mountain range so, naturally the majority of the research has east side growing conditions in mind. But that still doesn’t mean that we “westsiders” didn’t glean some valuable information from the conference.

Topics such as using hormones to break seed piece dormancy and balance the amount of stems per hill was very interesting. We (the west side) have been doing this for some time but they (the east side) are on the right track. Also the appropriate amount of nutrients to use was very important. Farmers are some of the best stewards of the land on the planet so they are always concerned about using the right amount of the right nutrients for their crop.

Overall, it was very informative and we look forward to sharing that information with the growers of Skagit County.

International Collaboration

On the 16^th through the 18^th of January, we attended the 24^th Annual Stoller International Associates Conference in Houston, Texas. Ag Tech Services has been to about 10 of these conferences over the past 15 years and it seems we learn something new every year. Even though this is a very international meeting, with 26 out of 46 presentations from outside the U.S., we are still able to pick up new ideas on plant physiology and plant hormone activity. These ideas are very applicable to our cropping systems in the U.S.

Naturally the research that is done has product sales in mind. What we find refreshing is when an idea or crop growth intent doesn’t work the way it was expected. It’s great to show success but it is also important to show failure if you are in search of knowledge, not just sales.

We at ATS will share what we learned this year with the growers of Skagit Valley and beyond. We can use this as part of a full program, or as a field trial. After all, it’s all about learning and applying.

The Big Boys and Their Bugs

What do Bayer, Dow Chemical, Monsanto, BASF, and Syngenta have in common? Obviously they are some of the largest players in the ag chem industry but on top of their corporate size, they also have a very strong and growing biological inoculant portfolio.

At this time the biological business is around the $218 million range and it is projected to go to about $420 million by 2020. That’s nearly double in a few short years. So what do they know that enables them to make such an aggressive projection? They know the biological system works and farmers are increasingly buying into it.

According to recent articles, ag chemical companies like the property called SAR, Systemic Acquired Resistance, which is triggered in the plants by certain biological players. SAR is a natural way that plants can defend themselves for insect and disease damage. Plant Growth Promoting Rhizobacteria seem to be the main players that farms around the country are using. They provide the SAR as well as ISR, Induced Systemic Resistance, along with root and plant growth promoting nutrient mineralization and protections from many soil diseases.

Why do I bring this up? As we are into harvest, I’m sure you will see some things that could have gone better with your crop. Perhaps looking at a PGPR inoculant for 2017 is a good idea. And the interesting point to remember is that we at Ag Tech Services have been using PGPRs in our programs for the past 13 years. I guess that puts us ahead of some of the big boys.

Let us know if you are interested and we will get you up to speed well before next planting season.

Arizona Winter Meeting

During the cold, dark, damp period of last November, Brian and I were able to slip out to warm Arizona for a few days. We can do that every two years because that is when BioHumaNetics, Inc., has their international product meeting. Those of you who do business with us may be more familiar with their agricultural label: HumaGro. We have sold their material for the past 12 years and we are still learning more about it.

 

The overall direction of the HumaGro line is plant health. We all know that a healthy plant is a productive plant. The nutrients in the HumaGro program are supported by their Micro Carbon Technology (MCT). By using extremely small organic acids, nutrients get into the plant through the foliage faster and with no burn. The HumaGro soil-based products with the Micro Carbon Technology get into the root system easily and also support the beneficial bacteria on the roots. This is certainly a win/win situation.

 

As I mentioned earlier, we have sold HumaGro products for the past 12 years and we look forward to another 12. Especially for those few warm days of learning in Arizona.

Did You Hear the One About the Traveling Agronomist . . .?

From March through October, you will find me on the road about two weeks out of every month. For eight months, my travels take me from home, in Western Washington, to four cities in eastern Washington, on to the Willamette Valley of Oregon for nine stops, and then home. After that trip I am home for a week to catch up on business and then off to Idaho for a three to four day visit before returning home and repeating the process. 

After each trip it takes about 1½ to 2 days for me to recover from what I call “stupid head,” a condition where you can only hear road noise or the drone of an airplane propeller.  I’m sure those of you who travel a lot know what “stupid head” is.

This really doesn’t sound like an exciting way to spend your summer, especially if you are a 64-year-old husband, father, and grandfather. But there is a reason and a validation. When I was in college I had a discussion with an advisor about the ag retail business. He told me if you want to be wealthy, don’t go into ag retail. I can honestly say he was right. I have been in this game for 38 years and I’m sure many of my former classmates have acquired much more wealth than I have. But I think I can say I have had more successes than they have. Every place I go, I have helped a farmer or fertilizer dealer become more successful in their business and I am welcomed back for another visit.

Life isn’t all about financial greatness or great self power. When you can educate a dealer who can now pass the information on to his farmers, or help a farmer be more productive and more profitable, you have succeeded in being a real Agronomist.

Now, if you will excuse me, it’s time to pack my suitcase.

Grow for Quality, not Quantity

Modern production agriculture has been striving for increased yield ever since I can remember. Farmers are trying anything that will give them even a slight yield increase. We should take another look at what makes a quality yield instead of a quantity yield.

Everything that can be done to increase early, vigorous root growth increases the quality of the crop. This holds true for grains, fruits, and vegetables. When the root system is dominant, there is more uniform branching and increased flowering. Seed heads on grain are fuller with less shriveled seeds. Fruit has more fruit spurs with better set and more uniform development.

This happens because the roots are the brains of the plant and the purpose of the plant is reproduction. With that in mind why would it not want to put out as many high-quality offspring as possible? The conflict comes in when we try to push for quantity. To do this we increase rates of fertilizer, mostly nitrogen, over water, and basically take the brains of the plant and give them a real hard shake. What we do in excess can totally mess up the plant’s hormonal direction and increase the internal stress level. So the crop we get may have increased in number or volume but internal quality and storability is lacking.

Develop the root system, reduce plant stress and let the plant do its job. You’ll both be happy.

Send in the Drones

Imagine yourself driving on a country road in a rural farm community about early June and you stop your car across from a picture perfect field of potatoes. The dark green rows on a brown soil background just takes you back to a safe, secure childhood memory. Then you hear a loud fan sound and a three foot by two foot black helicopter swoops over your car and starts making precise passes over the field. Don’t call the NSA, FAA, or UFO Seekers; it’s just a farmer checking up on the health of his crop. It’s called Drone Field Surveillance and it could be coming to a farm near you.

By using infrared imagery to take pictures of the field, this helicopter can tell a grower if his crop is under stress and where that stress is located long before the plant will look bad. Basically a sick plant puts off a different infrared spectrum color than a healthy plant. This new technology is only new in the method of delivery. Back in the 1980s the same infrared technology was available but it was from satellites far above the earth. The question still remains as it did long ago: Who controls the data and is it cost effective? The only way for a farmer to have complete control is to buy the flying platform, chopper or fixed wing, buy the photography equipment, learn how to work with the FAA and then do it themselves. Then once you have the data, can you really use it? If you have places that are geo-referenced in your field, do you have an applicator that can do site specific applications? So many questions with too few real answers.

I was at a sales meeting this year where the presenter put up a slide of a farmer trying to drink out of a fully pressurized fire hose. He said this is how farmers sometimes feel about data: too much at one time is hard to swallow. I think this is the same with Drone Surveillance Technology. We should learn how to drink in a small amount at first so we don’t choke on the full flow.

What Used to Be True

I am a science fiction fan. I have been all my life and will probably die a fan. Often some words of wisdom can come from a sci-fi movie that makes sense in today’s world. In the movie Men in Black, Tommy Lee Jones told Will Smith something like the following: Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the earth was the center of the universe, five hundred years ago, everybody knew the earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet, imagine what you will know tomorrow.

Welcome to the world of production agriculture.

When I started my career in 1976, it was all about fertilizer and chemicals. We really didn’t know exactly how they worked but they did work. Then came Precision Ag. This was going to revolutionize farming by applying the proper nutrients at the correct location in a field. From the early 1980s to the present, it is estimated that the majority of fertilizer and chemical dealers who do custom chemical application use some sort of precision application methods. Actual farmer driven acceptance and use has lagged behind mostly because of cost.

Next came Biotech and GMO. Biotech was basically using biological organisms to help the plant defend itself from insects. One organism was used back then and now multiple insect and disease preventing bacteria and fungi are added to crop seeds driving the cost through the roof. But now we are starting to see resistance in some parts of the country.

GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) are the current latest and greatest. They have been around for a long time starting with Roundup Ready corn which was first commercialized in 1998. Since then we have added sugar beets, alfalfa, and canola to the list. This is all about getting good weed control economically with one product. What they forgot, again, was a term called resistance. So many weeds across the country are resistant to Roundup that the initial low-cost solution is becoming very expensive.

So goes the world of production ag. What we know at one time to be the latest and greatest changes very fast because we work in an ever changing environment. Soils, insects, diseases, and weeds are always changing. They were here before we were and they will still be here when we are gone.

The lesson for today: don’t get too comfortable with all you know today. Remember there will be a lot more to learn tomorrow.

Chemosensitization

I’ve been following this idea of enhancing the activity of fungicides. Or it could be described as enhancing the target pathogen’s sensitivity to fungicides. I have noticed that there is similar research and information in both the agricultural arena as well as human health. The results are the same. This is one of those true “synergy” or “win-win” scenarios. When using a tool like chemosensitization – proper math goes right out the window. One plus one no longer equals two – now we get more.

The basic idea is to use lower risk materials with antifungal properties along with conventional fungicides.  What was unexpected in the research was how well this approach worked. Each product on its own has activity on the pathogen. When put together the pathogen control was much higher than the control achieved with either product alone (and higher than the separate applications added together). Control has been so good that the researchers were able to use lower rates of the fungicides and still achieve good control. With the cost of today’s fungicides I think it would be easy to achieve a favorable ROI using this chemosensitization approach.

I used the words lower risk earlier and I want to elaborate on what I meant. The phrase “lower risk” applies for multiple reasons. Safety – Lower risk refers to the mode of action of the products. They are much safer for people and the environment. Resistance danger - The materials being used to achieve chemosensitization are essential oils, plant compounds, and microbial exudates. Materials with these types of origins, having evolved as parts of plant and microbial defense mechanisms, carry a lower risk of a pathogen developing resistance. Especially when compared to resistance buildup to chemical fungicides.

One compound that consistently shows up in research is thymol (2-isopropyl-5-methylphenol). I have run across thymol in both human health research and plant pathology work. The names of some of the antifungal medicines that thymol was able to make more effective in the human health realm end in “…azole” just like many of our crop fungicides. The thymol-azole combination completely stopped fungal growth at rates lower than when an azole medicine is used by itself. The research even tested the combo against organisms already resistant to the medicines. Thymol made the organism susceptible to the fungicide again.

Thymol seems to have most of its action on cell walls and cell membranes.  The azole drugs and fungicides also have activity on cell walls and membranes which may be why they work so good together. 

Our bio-pesticide products from Huma Gro® utilize thymol as a major component. For soil use there is ProMax™ which also gives us a bio-fumigant action. For foliar use we have Proud3® with local systemic activity and residual control that is rare for an organic product. Here is a way to maximize your fungicide dollar, reduce application rates, and use an inexpensive lower risk product that is geared toward supporting plant health as well as harassing the pathogen and making it easier to control.

Research examples: Quadris® (azoxystrobin) and thymol together had enhanced activity on Bipolaris sorokiniana, Phoma glomerata, Alternaria sp., and Stagonospora nodorum.

Dividend® (difenoconazole) and thymol showed enhanced activity on Bipolaris sorokiniana, and Stagonospora nodorum.

Folicur® (tebuconazole) and thymol showed enhanced activity on Alternaria alternata.