We had that warm, humid one of our agronomists described it as tropical conditions there in late August and September. We had some tremendous disease pressure. Whether it was anthracnose, fusarium, diplodia, giberrella . . . Munkvold now allows the term cannibalized is accurate, but he d like to shy away from that term. During the grain-fill period, the plant is physiologically programmed to allocate all the energy it produces to the kernels, he says.
Drought stress makes corn plants more susceptible to infections from diseases.
They, in turn, weaken the plant. You can t really separate the effect of environmental stress from the effect of stalk rot, Munkvold says. And this year, anthracnose stalk rot was more prevalent than ever before. Whenever we have stalk rot problems, there is a mixture of pathogens. But this year it seems that anthracnose was the most common one, which is unusual.