Cropping Issues in Northwest Minnesota

COVID-19 = Monkey wrench COVID-19 threw a monkey wrench into the gears of the annual Northwest Research & Outreach Center's (NWROC) Crops & Soils Day program.  Rather than risk having this day meant for education and networking become some sort of COVID-19 super-spreader event, Extension and College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences (CFANS) personnel and the NWROC's director Dr. Albert Sims decided to bring the program online. Short videos summarizing research projects CFANS and Extension faculty members from both the NWROC and the St. Paul campus were captured on video discussing some of their 2020 research projects, what they hope to learn and how the projects will provide value to crop producers in northwest Minnesota and beyond. These videos are hosted on the NWROC website .  There are 10 videos total and individual topics and speakers include: Conservation Drainage Research: Lindsay Pease, NWROC Management of Rhizoctonia in Sugarbeet - Ashok Chan...

Photo. Common waterhemp in corn (Credit: Angie Rieck-Hinz, Iowa State University). Note: Tom Peters, Extension Sugarbeet Agronomist with University of Minnesota and North Dakota State University, recently posted the article “ It Didn’t Rain. What is the Fate of my Soil-Applied Herbicide? ” He discusses the effects that the recent dry soil conditions and lack of rain might have on soil-applied herbicides in the article, reprinted below.  While the herbicide active ingredients might be different for fields planted to corn and soybean, the effects of dry soils on pre-emergence herbicide activation is the same. In 2017 Lisa Behnken, Crops Extension Educator in southern Minnesota, spoke about these very challenges in corn in this video . The message to use a preemergence herbicide in 2018 was well received for growers with fields where waterhemp is their primary weed. There was a flurry of activity last week to apply preemergence products and to take advantage of the forecast fo...