Dylan Mangel
Appearances
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
And we really, at that point, it was a turning point for our organization, which is the SCN Coalition. and how do we combat that degradation? What do we do next? So at that point, We looked around and realized there's a bit of a gap. Resistance is the most economical way to manage a disease, varietal resistance. And we really didn't have anything available.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
There are a couple other resistance genes available in the germplasm. So we really needed to put this group together to sort of build a stopgap for how can we identify what's coming next? How can we get resources to growers? How can we get them to start growing? you know, maybe trying some of these new resources and preventing that yield loss on their farms. So that's how our organization started.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
I guess I should mention what the SCN Coalition is. We're basically a public-private partnership that was basically formed just to build awareness of this And this is a situation, academia doesn't always have common goals with industry. We have different ideas at times, but this was a situation where growers didn't know they had this path, this pathogen or this parasite.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
And from extension, we want them to know it's there so they can make those decisions to manage it properly. Industry had the same goal. So it was a time when we overlapped. So we built this group with funding from soybean checkoffs, state, regional, national.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
And then we also have we also work with some industry groups as well to just build awareness and get as many growers aware of this disease as possible. So that's what our group does.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
I think a lot of people are working on that next solution. And it's going to come in different ways. So if we just look at the general way to manage soybean cyst nematode, we think about that varietal resistance first. The next thing is rotation. Rotating to a non-host crop can make a huge difference, even if it's just one year out of soybeans.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
I know there's not a lot of soybean on soybean growers out there, but a normal corn soybean rotation actually can go quite well. just a single year is going to knock those numbers back by a lot. The next thing is considering a nematode protectant seed treatment.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
In that gap where we started to see resistance fall off, industry came in quickly and it started to fill that in with a lot of new products that are going to be basically nematicides. We're also seeing new generations of bionematicides, biologicals targeting these. So there's a lot of new stuff. Considering one of those and then
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
The big follow-up for management is just testing to see if you have that nematode still. You can't see it unless you have very extreme cases. You might see stunting in your fields, but like Horacio said, you could get up to that 30% yield loss, which is quite a – I mean, that's a lot, right? But without those noticeable above-ground symptoms.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
So testing is really important to see if this population is – managed properly if it's staying under control or if you need to take more extreme actions with management.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
So there's others coming online. So industry, that's sort of a rapid response to this problem. Those two products came out. There's definitely new ones coming out. Timerium from Syngenta is something that's going to be coming out. And I think we've seen that in trials in the field and our research. And they're being pretty confident in that. I think we'll see that in the next couple of years.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
I'm not sure of the exact timeline. There's also bionomaticides that we've been looking at as well. So these same companies, some additional ones, they're putting those products out there. When it comes to these, I think everyone's seen biologicals pick up in the last couple of years. It's What we've seen with them so far is maybe some level of effectiveness.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
But I think when it comes to biologicals, you've got to have lower expectations as well. So those products are often marketed as pairing with other products to get a more complete control. But as time goes on and as we realize the limitations of resistance in the short term, industry has filled that gap with these kind of products.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
Yeah, so I think about them just like an insecticide. In fact, I often think about nematodes as insects. They're basically small worms. So if you can poison them, if you can kill them, it's going to work like that. Now, a lot of these products have different modes of action, just the same way with fungicides.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
We have quite a few mode of actions, a lot of different chemistries, but ultimately the individual products are there to kill those nematodes. Okay.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
Yeah, they've spread pretty much everywhere rapidly. They definitely have preferences. I think nematode in general, they need some sand in that soil so they can get around. They need pockets in there. So compared to a bacteria, these are much larger. So they need to be able to move around or swim around in those soil pockets. So we typically see worse damage in those sandy soils.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
I'd say just pulling plants isn't even enough because... Depending on soil type, especially unless you have really sandy soils, those cysts are going to fall off really easily. So it's actually pretty difficult to dig those. And, you know, we'll try it sometimes. We'll dig them up and we will very carefully pull soil off and see if we can see those.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
But even then, that can be deceiving if you pull that up and have nothing there. Really, soil testing is the only consistent option to see if that's in there. fortunately, a lot of states have free or checkoff funded soil testing programs for soybean cyst nematode. I know we have one here in Nebraska. Any Nebraska farmer can bring our lab soil samples and we'll tell them if they have it.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
Horacio, you guys are the same in Ohio, correct? Yeah, correct.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
And I'm not sure off the top of my head, but several other states also have programs. So if you have questions, I think the first place I'd start is with your local extension in your state or your local extension service, and they could probably guide you right to the most – economical testing option in your state?
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
Well, the great thing about this nematode as far as sampling is it's always going to stay in the top of the soil profile. Some of the corn nematodes will move up and down at different times of the year. So you got to really time those perfectly. This one you can sample any time of the year and at any point in your rotation.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
But I'll suggest that the point at which those populations will be at their highest is towards the end or at the end of a soybean season. So if you're just starting out and you want to check, grab those soil samples in the fall right after you harvest. And then you can see what they are at their peak level.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
But if you do grab them off cycle and you want to follow up in two or three or five years and see if they're moving still, grab them at that same point in your rotation. And then you'll have a point to compare them with.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
Right. That's good. And you could do that too. But it's really good to know when we read those results that these are coming out of corn because we know those numbers have fallen a lot. so we can read into those numbers differently based on where you are at in that rotation.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
Well, if Corey has any background information on those fields, maybe it'd be good for him to share some of that.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
Yeah. So, I mean, that's a – coming out of corn, going into beans, we're going to read those as higher than we would have coming out of beans, right? But – In Nebraska, for example, our median positive field coming out of beans is around 4,000 eggs per 100 cc of soil. So that's the median. We see a lot of fields that have very low levels, lower than we're seeing here.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
We also get fields with 80,000. I don't know. Horacio, what's the highest SCN count you've ever seen?
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
Yeah, and that's actually, it makes sense, right? Even if some of that nematode blew in there over the years from close by fields, it didn't really have anything to really increase numbers. You know, by nature of soil sampling, we're probing, we might miss the odd random nematode there, but that makes complete sense that that's a new field. And we actually run into that problem with research.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
We go out and we try to find some areas that have no nematodes at this point. And we have to go to these new fields or corn on corn fields and work with that. And I'll also say your corn on corn field. with the history of that was your second lowest one that you had out of that group of fields as well.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
And that's a big one. I think we've also seen soybean yields not keep up with the progression that corn yields have made in the last several years. But that could actually just be that soybean cyst nematode is building up in these fields across our country, and that's holding those yields back. So, yeah, it's probably a mix of things, but the cysts are actually definitely playing a role.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
Yeah. Two of the biggest predictors that we've observed are sand content in that soil and soil pH percentage. Those increase the nematodes do a little bit better. So that can drive yield loss based on those levels. So the higher the pH, the more.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
Well, I think in the short-term future, I think the most exciting thing is peaking the resistance source is making it into really good genetic backgrounds. It's been around for a while. When 88788 started to fail, peaking showed up on the scene.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
But for breeding, it takes a good decade to get good changes, and now we're getting that resistance source and really good backgrounds, and we've just seen it doing really well in variety trials.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
That's the short-term excitement, but even with that, PI-887-88 is still effective, and we need to keep rotating those, if nothing else, but to save peaking from breaking in the same way that PI-887-88 did. There's potential traits coming out for soybean cyst nematode in the future. But again, these things take time. So we might not see any of that for who knows how long.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
But that could really change the system here. Maybe even in the longer term, breeding is still going on and we're identifying new resistant sources out there. But it takes so long to get those into a variety from a pipeline. But we'll see that in the long term. nematicides or nematode protectant seed treatments, there's going to continue to be new stuff available.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
I hope those are always better than the previous generation. So I think that's going to continue to be a stopgap. But really the big thing now is just getting that awareness out there so we can maintain the resistance genes we have for as long as possible. This is the same problem in different fields. We've got limited tools to control these pests.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
And we need to use them carefully so that they'll last as long as possible. Unlike herbicide resistant weeds or other problems, you can't blame this one on your neighbors. This one, everyone's got their own nematode population and they get to choose to manage it how they want. So think about that on your own farms and make those genes last as long as possible. Same thing with all these tools.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
Use them properly so they last for you.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
Yeah, thanks for having me. My name is Dylan Mangel, and I'm the extension soybean pathologist at the University of Nebraska. And I'm actually from Nebraska, too, going up around row crop operations. And now I get to focus just on the diseases that we see on those soybeans.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
What I'll say is you'd be hard pressed to find a susceptible soybean. Because everything's got eight, eight, seven, eighty eight. And a few things have peaking. So we've still got a lot of 88788 in the germplasm. In certain maturity groups, you will find susceptibles still. So that would make sense. But where you guys are, I don't know if there's any susceptibles out there.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
But definitely rotate between those two sources. And every now and then you might see a different source. Try different things. Keep those nematodes confused, basically, so they don't learn how to overcome it.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
Anything's possible. So I think you're probably talking about what they might do with managing mosquito populations, right? Right. Yeah, that's definitely something we've all talked about. And it definitely could be neat in the future. It's tough, though, because it's hard to get them all. And even if some survive, you know, you could knock those populations down, but they grow so fast.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
I've seen fields go from a thousand eggs to twenty five thousand in one year. So you really got to think about managing this at any level. And if we can't get them all, it's going to keep coming back and getting us.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
Yeah, so soybean cyst nematode, it's a non-native pest. It's a non-native parasite to the U.S. And as soybean production moved across this country and really, really ramped up, this pest sort of moved with it. It's a nematode. It's basically survives in the soil and it's going to parasitize those roots, just sort of sapping yield away from those nematodes.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
And the big reason we need to talk about it is because it's oftentimes going to steal some level, often significant levels of yield without noticeable above ground symptoms. So it's not going to turn the plant red or purple. You can't really just see it's out there. You might just be missing some yield and you might not know why.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
And sometimes it might be low enough that you don't really even think about it. But it's still taking that money out of your pocket.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
Yeah, so the history of how it got here, I think there's probably differing ideas on how it got here, but it sort of showed up in the Carolinas. It showed up up the East Coast, and then it kind of followed the Missouri River up and Mississippi River up, actually the Mississippi mostly, and spread out from there. In Nebraska, for example, where I am, we didn't have it until 1986.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
And it hit one of those edge counties along the river. It followed that river up and then it's consistently worked west from there. And now we pretty much have it in every county that's growing soybeans in the state. We're still adding some new ones as soybeans continue to move west, but it's going to move around with soil. It's going to move
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
Even if wind is blowing soil, it's going to move around. So it's able to consistently march along and it's ultimately just going to follow everywhere beans go.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
No. Yep. So we have different nematodes in those crops for sure. But this one, it really specializes on soybean. But I will say there's likely exceptions where it's finding weedy hosts or other similar plants to soybean that it's also able to grow on as well. So think about that with weed control as well. Just imagine the difference in, you know, corn and wheat are a pretty similar monocot crop.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
Soybeans are quite different when it comes to how related they are. So those nematodes aren't crossing over necessarily necessarily. But if you've got other similar crops or other similar hosts out there to soybean, they might be growing on those as well.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
So soybean cyst nematode, it's been around. It's spread. And it actually started to become quite an issue in the 1990s. At that time, research, science, industry found a resistance source that was able to control this. So that first step of control was introducing a single resistance gene into a lot of the varieties that were out there. They put it in a few at first.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
Slowly, they dumped it into more and more. And eventually it sort of ended up with that one resistance gene in all the varieties or in most of the varieties. That resistance source was called PI88788. So if you look in a seed catalog for soybean, you'll see a column that might say SCN and it'll say PI88788 in a lot of those varieties. That's still the case today.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield
And that worked really well for quite a while. The problem came... In the early 2010s, and it's the same problem we see all the time when we rely on one thing to control a wild population, those nematodes evolved to overcome that and reproduce on that resistance source. So PI-887-88 degraded in its effectiveness.