Bayer

Pest and disease pressures. Farmers have always found ways to fight against pest and disease pressures. As technology improves, there are increasingly better ways to not only react to disease symptoms, but to try to be proactive in preventing them from occurring in the first place. “Prevention is the name of the game. Early season scouting is really important, knowing the history of your fields, whether you've had issues with diseases in that field in the past or not, because that shows that the pathogen has the opportunity to be present.”

That's Kyle Strichilla, a crop protection field sales representative for Bayer Crop Sciences. He's based in the Pacific Northwest, where he focuses a lot of his attention on diseases of winter wheat like stripe rust. “In rust is the big one that I think most winter wheat growers are mindful of because it has been bad in the past. For example, last year I remember in the winter hearing rumblings from researchers that it had the potential based on the climate and the conditions that we were seeing early season to be a bad year for stripe rust. And then I didn't really hear much about stripe rust as the season went on. So to me, that's an indication that guys are forecasting disease pressure for the year and taking those preventative measures.” Strichilla says Bayer offers products like their absolute max fungicide. For more information, contact your local Bayer cereal expert or visit cereal experts.com. Not all products are registered in all states and may be subject to use restrictions. Always read and follow label directions.