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Mike Howell (00:08):
The Dirt with me, Mike Howell, an eKonomics podcast where I present the down and dirty agronomic science to help grow crops and bottom lines. Inspired by eKonomics.com, farming’s go-to informational resource, I’m here to break down the latest crop nutrition research, news and issues, helping farmers make better business decisions through actionable insights. Let’s dig in. Well, hello again everyone. Welcome back to The Dirt. Glad you’re tuning in again with us this week. If you’ve been listening for very long, you know that we have been going around and visiting with some of our new faculty members with different universities around the country. Today we’re going to wrap up meeting with our new agronomist for the year. We have Dr. Wade Webster with us today from North Dakota State. Wade, welcome to The Dirt.
Wade Webster (01:00):
Thank you, Mike. Very glad to be here with you guys.
Mike Howell (01:02):
Wade, if you will introduce yourself to our listeners and tell them a little bit about what you do.
Wade Webster (01:07):
My name is Wade Webster. I am the extension soybean pathologist up here in North Dakota. My responsibilities are of every soybean disease in the Northern Great Plains. We’re in a very interesting environment up here because soybeans have not historically been grown in this region before up until about the past few decades. We’re in a completely different environment than what a lot of other regions such as the rest of the Midwest or the Mid-South might be experiencing, but we have a lot of similar problems and some new ones as well that are showing up.
(01:40):
My job’s very interesting. I have about 7 million acres of soybeans that I’m responsible for and we do everything from the eastern side of the state, which is very much the Midwest, all the way to the western side of the region as well, and that is very much cowboy country. A lot of dry ground, some places very lucky to get about 10 inches of the rainfall a year. There are struggles in both sides but very different environments that I have to work with.
Mike Howell (02:08):
It sounds like you’re going to have plenty to do, Wade. Before we get into that, if you would tell our listeners a little bit about some of your past research experience and some of the things that you have found in some of your earlier research.
Wade Webster (02:19):
I actually started out my research career during my undergraduate back in Bozeman, Montana, Montana State University where I got involved into a breeding lab with a wheat program. I started to fall in love with breeding and then I ended up getting into pathology. I was tricked. I thought I was going to be doing breeding, but I was slid into the pathology world, which I’m very glad for now. Ended up doing my PhD at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin. While I was there, worked on soybean white mold, which is very much a northern disease that we deal with very consistently, quite devastating caused by sclerotinia. This particular disease, it doesn’t show up every single year, but it does show up very hard in very wet and cool years such as what we saw in 2024.
(03:10):
This was actually a very significant year for white mold development, which was validating for myself because we got to demonstrate a lot of our research was actually working, which was exciting. What we’ve been able to do, especially on white mold primarily is looking at fungicides, multiple different products we can use. We can also look at different cultural practices, so the seeding rates or the row spacing of this particular crop for white mold control, and then fertility management as well, which is very interesting. The fertility aspect, white mold is the only disease that we see greater disease development with healthier plants, which is an interesting perspective and story that I’m sure we can get into.
Mike Howell (03:54):
Wade, I used to be the peanut specialist in Mississippi and diseases was one of our major issues, and white mold was a problem in peanuts. I don’t remember the exact culture of that, but it sounds like it’s going to be a similar disease in peanuts that we deal with in the southern U.S.
Wade Webster (04:09):
Yeah, you’re right. That white mold is caused by Sclerotinia minor, which is a cousin to the soybean white mold, which is sclerotinia sclerotiorum. Very similar diseases, environmentally very similar, not exactly the same, but management again is going to be very critical for that particular disease.
Mike Howell (04:28):
Wade, I know you’re new in this role, but you’ve been working in this area for quite a while. What are some of the biggest issues that producers in North Dakota are going to be facing?
Wade Webster (04:36):
We have about three primary disease issues that we deal with. White mold is probably number two or three every year. The other two diseases are soybean cyst nematode or SCN, which is our number one yield robbing disease year in and year out. Then the other one is phytophthora root and stem rot, which is what we call a water mold. Again, that shows up in very wet years. We get very heavy rainfall events or some sort of ponding or flooding with an individual field, that phytophthora shows up in very high levels. We have some resistance to both the phytophthora and the SCN, but unfortunately what we’re finding is that those resistances are starting to break down. Very similar to what we see with weeds. We see that herbicide resistance starting to come up, so we’re losing some of her tools in our toolbox. It’s very similar in the pathology world.
Mike Howell (05:30):
That’s kind of a scary thought, losing tools in your toolbox. There’s just not a whole lot of new tools coming out. What are producers going to do if we start losing more of these tools?
Wade Webster (05:39):
That’s a really great question. We can keep hoping and praying that more products might be coming through the pipelines the best that we can, but if we can try to rotate crops as much as possible, and that’s one of the struggles that I deal with up here. We historically in the Dakotas have had a very diverse cropping system, up to about 12 different crops that can be grown. Soybeans historically have not been one of those major crops. But again, in the past 10 years or so, we’ve seen more and more soybeans starting to develop in this area, being produced. A lot of these farmers up here are putting soybean on soybean on soybean, and because of that, these diseases along with other issues are starting to show up and pop up in these fields.
(06:23):
But just purely eKonomics, it’s a lot more beneficial to put soybeans in the ground than it is say corn or wheat in some years. Now, obviously with the prices and the way that the markets are looking at the moment, I don’t know what that’s going to look like in this next year. But if we can try to rotate out some of these crops, give these fields a break from soybean production, that can absolutely help.
Mike Howell (06:47):
Going back to my peanut days, that was the first thing we encouraged everybody to do is rotate that crop and we didn’t like to put peanuts on the field more than one out of every three years. You mentioned eKonomics and eKonomics is what’s going to drive the bus on this. We’ve got to make it profitable. A lot of times we would have to narrow that window a little bit just to make sure we made a profit.
Wade Webster (07:06):
Yeah, that’s exactly right. We can do as much research as we want, but if we can’t make the farmers make some money, then things aren’t going to change.
Mike Howell (07:15):
Hey guys. Mike here and I want to personally thank you for listening to today’s episode. If you like the show and want to continue hearing it, please like, subscribe, share and rate it. The future of The Dirt depends on your support. We’ve got plenty of big things coming up this season, so as always, stay tuned. Wade, one thing you mentioned earlier on was soil fertility and we know that healthy plants are going to be able to fight off these diseases a little more. Talk a little bit more about the relationship between soil fertility and disease management, how those two go hand-in-hand
Wade Webster (07:50):
With most diseases, plants, if they are healthier, if they are not struggling for these different resources, the nutrient profiles, then they are going to be healthier. They’re going to be more primed, more ready to fight off different diseases. SCN, phytophthora are examples of that. Diseases in which there’s not a what we call qualitative or complete resistance, it’s either yes or no disease development, we can see some of these plants be better off if they are properly fed. Now, in the inverse of that, there’s disease white mold that I mentioned, and white mold in particular, the healthier the plants are, the bigger and more bushy that these beans typically will get, and because of that we have increased moisture, we have reduced wind flow through that crop canopy and that is the perfect conditions for white mold to develop.
(08:42):
Because of that, we typically recommend these farmers are not putting out a lot of nitrogen, particularly right before beans, which is never recommended, but there are some areas up here with a lot of dairy ground in which they are spreading the manure out onto these fields. If you’re putting manure out onto fields with a history of white mold, then that might be something that we want to try to more heavily target towards management, whether that’s more fungicides, cultural practices and other means of management for white mold.
Mike Howell (09:14):
Wade, you said that you’re the extension plant pathologist and I know you have to work with the growers and get the research information out, but these days it seems like every extension agent also has a research component. I don’t know if that’s official or unofficial, but do you have a research appointment and what types of research are you planning to get started in this new role?
Wade Webster (09:31):
I do have a research appointment. It is 10% of my time, which coincidentally turns into 100% of my time extension and 100% of my time is research. Didn’t realize that’s what I signed up for, but I do love my job. A lot of the research that we manage in my particular program is dedicated towards the management of these diseases. But a lot of that focuses on primarily fungicides, whether that is seed treatment applied or that is foliar over the top applied fungicides later in the season. We spend a lot of time focusing on that. We also look at varietal resistance, screening breeding lines to multiple of these diseases both in the greenhouse and in the field so that we can confirm that, “Hey, these are working, these are effective management tools against these different diseases as well as helping out the breeding program leading to future releases of resistant lines.”
(10:26):
We also do a lot of predictive modeling in my program where we take disease data and we take a lot of the environmental conditions, whether that’s the weather, that’s the soil types, that is the management practices that were done in those fields, and we try to predict how those factors can predict whether disease is going to develop or not. We have a very heavily computational side of my program as well that runs a lot of these analyses and tries to put out what we call decision support systems or DSS, and those are tools that these farmers can then utilize during the season to understand whether they need to make an application of a fungicide or they don’t need to make an application, then they can save the cost of that particular program.
(11:11):
Those are kind of the primary objectives within my research program, the goal obviously being in an extension appointment is that the research can be applied out to these farmers in a very short timeframe so that they can get that ROI, that investment that they put into the research programs through the checkoff dollars, right? Very, very thankful for their support and obviously ultimate goal here is to help the farmers at the end of the day.
Mike Howell (11:36):
That’s what it’s all about. We’ve got to get the research information and get it back out to the farmers. You’ve mentioned ROI, that’s the driver for everything. If it’s not making money for these farmers, we’re going to have to go a different way to find a solution to these problems. That’s the first thing I look at is are we going to be able to make the farmers money. A whole list of other things we can look at after we see if it will make money.
Wade Webster (11:55):
Exactly. There’s a lot of tools out there, and fortunately depending on how you look at it, there’s more and more products coming every year. There’s the question of are those actually going to pay? Are they good products? Are they adequate products, at the very least? That’s where my job comes in and it’s really important that we test out a lot of these different chemicals, different biologicals so that we can give the information to the farmers and say, “Hey, product X and product Y are actually good, and that might be something that you want to apply in this coming season so that you can make more profit per acre and be sustainable in that regard.”
Mike Howell (12:33):
Wade, we’ve talked about a lot of information here today. Is there anything else you want to talk about before we wrap this segment up?
Wade Webster (12:39):
No, that’s pretty good conversation right there on soybean diseases in the Northern Great Plains. I know there might be a lot of listeners from the southern region of the U.S. that maybe don’t deal with some of these diseases that we have up here up north, so I appreciate that.
Mike Howell (12:53):
Well, if you ever get bored and want to come down to the south, we’ve got plenty of diseases you can take back to North Dakota with you.
Wade Webster (12:58):
I don’t know if I want to take them, but yeah.
Mike Howell (13:00):
We appreciate you taking time to visit with us today. Listeners, if you will, hang around for just a couple of minutes and we’ll be right back with segment two. Listeners, I hope you enjoyed the first segment of today’s show. If you did, please take a minute and give us a rating on your favorite podcast channel or app and give us some feedback as well. We want to hear from you to help make the show even better and don’t keep it to yourself. Please share these episodes with co-workers, family, friends, anyone you think may benefit from the information we’re sharing here.
(13:30):
Don’t forget to visit our website, nutrien-eKonomics.com to help find the latest crop nutrition news and research information as well as market updates, a growing degree day calculator, a nutrient use calculator, a rainfall tracker, and much, much more. It’s all at nutrien-eKonomics.com. Most episodes of The Dirt are now available for CCA credits. Visit our website and click on the agronomics tab to find these CCA credit opportunities. If you have a question you can ask one of our agronomy team members, simply ask your question and one of us will get back with you. Thanks for listening. Now segment two of The Dirt.
(14:17):
Listeners, welcome back to segment two. If you’ve been tuning in this season, you understand that we are doing a tour around North America visiting different research farms. Today we have Wade Webster back with us and we’re going to talk about a research farm associated with North Dakota State University. Now, if you’ve been listening very long, you know we already talked about a research farm at North Dakota State. We talked about the sheep production back earlier in the season, but I think today we’re going to focus more on the station that’s dealing more with agronomic crops. Wade, welcome back and if you will, introduce the research farm that you wanted to talk about a little bit.
Wade Webster (14:50):
The research farm I want to talk about is what we call The Oakes Irrigation Research Site or Research Farm here at NDSU. This site is one of my favorite research farms that I’ve ever been associated with. This individual farm has irrigation, which is incredibly great for the pathology work that I do within my research and extension program, but they have a lot of diverse crops and cropping systems that they work with in this region. Particularly, they have a lot of onions and potatoes that go on at that research site in that area. This research site farm is very sandy soil, so they have the absolute necessity to use irrigation, but that also drives a lot of different diseases as well. There’s a lot of struggles, but also a lot of great research that can come out of this particular research farm in the southeastern portion of the state.
Mike Howell (15:44):
Wade, can you give us a little bit about the history of the farm, when it was established and how long it’s been there, things like that?
Wade Webster (15:50):
The research farm, that was a farmer many years ago back in the ’70s had owned it and he wanted to donate it to NDSU. After he passed away, there were believe about 30 acres in this farm that were donated with the clear expectation that it was dedicated to the research and the development of new graduate students. That has been the main focus of this particular site. Until this day, there’s one irrigation system over about these 30 acres that are run. We consistently do field days and graduate student training. There are high school students that come in on an annual basis, learn about agriculture, understand what we do at NDSU, the importance of research and extension both, and how they go hand in hand. This is a really great educational location as well for the state.
Mike Howell (16:42):
Wade, you mentioned the plant pathology research and I’m sure there’s some irrigation research going on with the irrigation systems you have there, but what other types of research are going on there at the farm?
Wade Webster (16:52):
One of the more fun research that’s going on is they do a lot of watermelon and cantaloupe research down there. In North Dakota, that is not very common and so that is very cool work to be done. Unfortunately, they don’t have the herbicide resistance that maybe corn and beans have, so the waterhemp is a little more out of control in those trials, but we always get some nice watermelon at the end of the season, which is an added benefit to that. On top of that, they have a lot of sunflower production down there too. We use these sunflowers as inoculum source for white mold disease. Every year what we do is we take those sunflowers, grow them up until their sunflower heads are really big and they start to droop.
(17:36):
We come in with a big wooden stake and we stab them and we inoculate them with this sclerotinia disease, essentially allowing it to reproduce, create more inoculum, and then that gets spread out into the field at harvest so that we have a good field for future research in the coming season. There’s also a pretty sizable amount of sweet corn, particularly at this research site as well, looking at both different fertilizer programs and then also if it’s a good research site for pathology to find new diseases. Sweet corn seems to be more susceptible than field corn is to a lot of different diseases, so it’s kind of a cool case study. Something’s going to show up, it’ll probably show up on sweet corn first.
Mike Howell (18:21):
Wade, you talked about the importance of the graduate students and the farm was founded for graduate student education, but we know these farms are also in these areas to help the producers in the area. Talk a little bit about why the farm is so valuable to the producers in the area.
Wade Webster (18:35):
This is one of the only irrigation research sites that we have in the state, so this is incredibly important for these farmers that do have irrigation. This is research that is relevant to these farmers on an annual basis so that the research that’s done there is put out every year. Those farmers take that information and that’s what drives a lot of these management decisions, whether they’re going to make and select certain varieties that are adapted to their region, whether they’re going to use fungicide programs or herbicide programs for their many diverse crops such as onions. There’s not research coming out of other research stations in the area for onion production, so this research site is critical for the management of these particular crops in this area.
(19:19):
Definitely see a lot of engagement. We see a lot of these farmers showing up to these field days and understand the importance of this. We actually did get a brand new building down there as well. Currently, it’s still a shell. They’re trying to finish up on the interior of it, but it’s going to be a nice pole barn with some offices in there and a nice little workshop. There’s a lot of value coming into this and hopefully this farm continues to grow and be very, very productive on the research and extension side.
Mike Howell (19:46):
Wade, that’s what these research farms are all about. We’ve got to do everything we can to get this research-based information back out to the farmers to help make them more profitable. We really appreciate the work that’s going on there. Wade, the final question is one that I’ve asked everybody this year. We know there’s a lot of technical advances going on in agriculture these days. We hear about drone technology and see and spray technology, things like that is all over the news. We know our farmers are facing different challenges from things like urban sprawl and the research farms are not immune to this. They have to deal with these same issues. I guess my question is how is this research farm going to have to adapt to keep up with the changing pace of agriculture and remain a viable resource for the producers in the community?
Wade Webster (20:28):
I’m not going to disagree with you on any of those factors. I think that all those are very, very critical. We are very fortunate here in North Dakota. There’s a lot of support for these research farms and we actually don’t see a lot of issues here. We still see continued support. Things seem to be on the up and up in this region. This farm in particular, if there’s one thing that I would love to see is I would love to see more land be acquired for the research on this site so that we could do more. There’s clearly a demand from the farmers that we want more research and need this environment, this kind of irrigation system.
(21:05):
Again, there’s so much that needs to be done, so many more questions, so many new technologies, like you mentioned, and we just have limited amount of space on some of these research farms and it makes it kind of tough. That’s definitely looking forward into the future would be a big dream to have more capacity to do some of this cooler, more technologically advanced kind of research.
Mike Howell (21:27):
Wade, we really appreciate you visiting with us today and talking about the research farm. Listeners, we appreciate you tuning in. As always, if you have questions about anything we’ve talked about today, you can visit our website. That’s nutrien-eKonomics.com. Until next time, this has been Mike Howell with The Dirt.
