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UW testing smart phone app to predict corn tar spot

A University of Wisconsin plant pathologist says they are testing a smartphone application to help corn growers predict and manage tar spot.
Dr. Damon Smith tells Brownfield, “We do have a preliminary model now. We’ll be testing that and validating it across the upper midwest here in 2019.”

Smith says he was pretty lucky because the Sporecaster framework they built to predict white mold in soybeans was exactly what they needed to help predict and manage tar spot. “What we’ve done is we’ve taken that framework and essentially retrained it. We brought in disease data from our trials here in Wisconsin. We pulled down the weather data, and we put that together and reworked that whole system so we’ve essentially made Sporecaster and turned it into Tarcaster.”

But Smith says the phone app isn’t available to producers yet but should be for the 2020 growing season.  He does expect to pass along management advice through farm and social media.
“We will be testing it, but we’ll also be pushing out what we think you should be doing in terms of what we’re seeing out in the field, should you be spraying, should you not be spraying.”

Smith says reports of tar spot were especially prevalent in southwestern Wisconsin and parts of northern Illinois last fall.