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Tar spot, southern rust, and more: Minnesota corn faces a tough year

A central Minnesota farmer faced an onslaught of crop diseases this year.

Owen Gohlke grows corn and soybeans near Belle Plaine and says problems arose from a wet growing season.

“Corn this year, we literally had every disease that you could imagine in central Minnesota. For example, we normally do not see southern rust as far north as where we are. But this year we saw it.”

He tells Brownfield tar spot returned.

“Which has come in the past few years. Northern corn leaf blight, a little big of Goss’ wilt. All those types of normal corn diseases that you see. And then we also had crown rot show up in a few different hybrids this year, and that happened because of that excessive moisture really in June.”

Gohlke says the disease pressure was not as bad in soybeans, but there was white mold, sudden death syndrome, and frogeye leaf spot.