2021 Crop Protection Network Impact

Mission Statement

The Crop Protection Network (CPN) is a multi-state and international collaboration of university/provincial extension specialists and public/private professionals who provide

unbiased, research-based information to farmers and agricultural personnel.

Below, we highlight our activities in 2021. 

Activities

In 2021, we:

• Hired two communications and marketing specialists

• Produced the first-ever regional Virtual Crop Scout School

• Developed the I See Dead Plants podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

• Started a webinar series with the American Society of Agronomy (ASA)

• Updated data at the CPN Field Crop Disease and Insect Loss Calculator

• Focused on infrastructural development and policy review to increase capacity for outreach and collaborations.

By the Numbers

In 2021:

• The CPN updated or published 17 publications for Corn, Soybean, and Small Grain Disease Management.

• The CPN released three web books:

  • Fungicide Use in Field Crops

  • Tar Spot of Corn

  • Crop Scouting Basics for Corn and Soybean

• The CPN website had nearly 360,000 unique page views. Approximately 153,500 publication downloads or views occurred.

• Virtual Crop Scout School registrants included 684 people representing 34 U.S. states and Puerto Rico and 24 other countries. There were 52 registrants from Canada representing five provinces. Registrants consisted of educators, researchers, independent crop consultants, co-op/fertilizer ag. chemical dealers, seed salespeople, farmer/farm managers, seed company representatives, and others.

• Fungicide efficacy tables were updated for soybean foliar diseases (CPN-1020), corn diseases (CPN-2011), soybean seedling diseases (CPN-2015), and wheat diseases (CPN-2020). These were downloaded over 20,500 times.

• The top five non-fungicide efficacy publications downloaded on the CPN website in 2021 were (in order):

  • Corn Disease Loss Estimate – 2019

  • An Overview of Tar Spot

  • An Overview of Southern Rust

  • Impact of foliar fungicide timing and fungicide class on corn yield response in the United States and Ontario, Canada

  • An Overview of White Mold

• The top article in the CPN Disease and Insect Encyclopedia was Tar Spot of Corn, with more than 14,000 views.

• Nearly 1,000 live attendees were present for the three ASA/CPN webinars in 2021. Registrants represented 56 U.S. states and Canadian provinces and 20 different countries. Most registrants were from industry or work as consultants.

• More than 3,100 continuing education unit (CEU) exams were attempted, awarding over 1,300 CEUs to Certified Crop Advisers (not including CEUs earned by viewing ASA webinars).

• Since its inception, CPN has received input from 195 specialists from 34 U.S. states and Ontario and Quebec, Canada.