Until recent days, the 2025 growing season had been largely uneventful for the Minnesota Soybean Research & Promotion Council-sponsored scouts that traveled the countryside scouting soybean fields this year in northwest Minnesota. Today, I decided to take a drive about 20 minutes away from the Northwest Research & Outreach Center (NWROC), stopping at corn and soybean fields along the way to see whether there was anything that folks may have an interest in learning about. I was not disappointed. Corn disease and insect injury Insect injury There was evidence of considerable insect injury on ear tips in a corn research trial at the NWROC in Crookston ( Figure 1 ), with many kernels sustaining injury. In addition to the physical injury caused by northern corn rootworm beetles ( Figure 2 ), picnic beetles and other pests, there was evidence of opportunistic pathogens that took advantage to colonize remaining kernel tissue. Figure 1. Feeding injury on kernels near the tip...
