New Crop Risk Tool Enhances Disease Management Decisions
Published: 05/22/2025
The new Crop Disease Forecasting tool on the Crop Protection Network, powered by the National Predictive Modeling Tool Initiative, provides weather-based forecasting and risk assessments for various crop diseases, helping farmers, crop advisors, and agricultural researchers to make date-driven decisions. This free resource forecasts the risk of key foliar diseases by feeding local weather data into the validated models. Currently, this tool has risk models for tar spot and gray leaf spot in corn, while models for white mold and frogeye leaf spot have been deployed for soybeans.
Key Benefits and Features
Risk levels are updated daily based on recent weather conditions.
The tool provides a 7-day forecast to assist in planning ahead of incoming weather events.
This tool covers multiple major above-ground diseases affecting corn and soybeans, making it a versatile resource for integrated disease management.
Accessible through the Crop Protection Network website, this tool is designed for easy use, with clear instructions for entering field data and interpreting results.
It is important to remember that in order for any disease to develop that there is a crop variety susceptible to the disease, the correct environmental conditions, and pathogen to be presence. These models do assume that the pathogens are present within your field. Regular scouting is important for understanding if the pathogens are present or have been present in the past.
It is also important to restrict the use of the risk prediction tool to only periods in which the crops are susceptible to the disease. For example, in corn, it's recommended that the growth stages be between V10 (10 emerged leaves) and R3 (milk) for any fungicide applications. For soybeans, the growth stages of concern for white mold are between R1 (first flower) and R3 (first pod), and the crop needs to have reached crop canopy closure for the mushroom-like structures of the white mold fungus to form. The white mold models in soybeans also differ between dryland and irrigated environments due to changes in the microenvironments of those systems. The growth stages of concern for frogeye leaf spot would be between R1 (first flower) and R5 (beginning seed set).
The Crop Disease Forecasting tool is freely available through the Crop Protection Network website. The platform is supported by research from land-grant universities, their Extension specialists, and the Crop Protection Network. Additional resources, such as fungicide efficacy tables and disease identification guides, are also available on the CPN website to complement the tool’s use.
Screenshot of the Crop Disease Forecasting Tool in action.
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