Fungicides offer benefits beyond disease control

MARKLE, Ind. — The pressure was on Trivapro®, the Syngenta fungicide with three active ingredients, to prove itself straight out of the gate.

“It came out about five years ago and its early claim was for Southern rust. We had a large Southern rust outbreak that year. That’s where Trivapro is really strong. While it does provide broad-spectrum control, Trivapro is the top product on the market for Southern rust,” said Chad Threewits, Syngenta agronomy service representative for Indiana.

Corn fungicides traditionally have been touted to control diseases like gray leaf spot and Northern corn leaf blight. With more farmers watching their ROI and demanding products that can deliver multiple benefits, Trivapro fungicide fits that bill, as well.

“For the last four or five years, we’ve seen an increase in the use of fungicides in corn every year. With products like Trivapro, we’re seeing more consistency on disease control and we’re seeing plant-health benefits when we have less than ideal conditions throughout the season,” Threewits said.

Top among those benefits is reducing stress to the plant, which has a range of other benefits. With drought always a concern, whether it is season-long or a flash drought, fungicides can help the corn plant cope with the stress of not enough water.

“We’ve seen in years with drought conditions, that a fungicide helped fields hold onto water a little bit longer. They’ve been proven to slow that water loss when it’s hot out. When we do that, we can keep the canopy closed. We can keep that light out of the bottom of the canopy and help hold off weeds that can compete with those plants for water,” Threewits said.

Along with reducing stress, Threewits said fungicides can help the plant continue to work on grain fill.

“As we get later in the season, it’s really about preserving that grain-fill period. It’s keeping that plant out of stress, so it can maximize the number of days it is filling ears. That’s what we mean when we talk about keeping the plant from dying down so it can dry down naturally. That is one thing we’ve seen with Trivapro and the other fungicides we work with,” Threewits said.

The Longest-Lasting

Application timing for fungicides is important, but fungicides with longer residuals, like Trivapro, mean growers have some flexibility when it comes to application.

“The R1 period is still the most ideal timing as far as protecting that plant through the end of the season, but we do have more folks looking at spraying little earlier in the season,” Threewits said.

For growers who are worried about late-season diseases, the longer residual also means freedom from worry even with an early application.

“Sometimes growers want to wait until after tassel, until brown silk, because they are afraid of disease coming in later. However, the longer residual control Trivapro provides, has allowed us to move from even the R2 or R3 timing back to R1 to give us that longer residual and maybe a bigger window, so growers can apply during that optimal timing and still benefit from late-season disease control,” Threewits said.

Early application also allows for the fungicide to start protecting the plant in other ways.

“When it comes to some of these other plant-health benefits, the earlier we can get it on, the more benefits we see,” Threewits said.

And throughout, Trivapro continues to offer protection through a three active ingredient approach. That includes patented SDHI SOLATENOL® technology.

The Hardest-Working

Disease protection, in length of time and in the scope of diseases, continues to be one of the main benefits of fungicides like Trivapro. That includes controlling traditional diseases like gray leaf spot and Northern corn leaf blight, but also newer diseases that are making their way into the Midwest.

“The proliferation of non-traditional disease threats has changed minds about fungicides and when and why to use them,” Threewits said.

“I think that’s one thing that has changed the mentality for growers about fungicides is in a year where maybe it’s drier and we might not get as much disease coming in. We’re now having to contend with these other diseases that can be a challenge.”

He added that new corn diseases are entering the Midwest from multiple directions.

“The last few years, it hasn’t been about the standard diseases like gray leaf spot and Northern corn leaf blight that we have traditionally faced. Over the last three to four years, we’ve seen something different. We’ve had Southern rust in the southern part of Indiana and then tar spot coming into the northern geographies in Indiana and Illinois, and we have solutions to help growers protect against both,” he said.

To learn more about Trivapro, visit NotAfraidToWork.com.

Product performance assumes disease presence.

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This column was contributed by Indiana AgriNews for Syngenta.