Better Fungicide Performance Starts with Adjuvants and Application Timing
Proactive planning, timely fungicide applications and strategic adjuvant use can help growers protect yield potential throughout the growing season
- Mid-season disease management decisions can have a significant impact on yield potential and return on investment.
- Disease risk is influenced by crop stage, weather conditions and field history long before symptoms become visible.
- Timely fungicide applications and quality spray coverage with crop adjuvants help maximize efficacy and protect crop performance.
- Trusted agronomic guidance helps growers optimize applications and make more confident in-season disease management decisions.
Disease pressure is an unavoidable part of crop production, but its impact doesn’t have to be.
“Growers need to have a disease-management plan,” says Ryan DeMorrow, Wilbur-Ellis Sales Manager for Southwest Michigan. “Making these decisions ahead of time can significantly impact return on investment. Margins are tight and every decision matters.”
Disease management begins before signs appear
Diseases can quickly erode yield potential. Waiting until you can see symptoms often means infection is already established. This makes it more difficult for tools like fungicides to provide maximum protection.
“The spores of the pathogen are often present before any symptoms occur,” DeMorrow explains. “If you wait until symptoms start to appear, you’re late to the game.”
Instead, plan fungicide timing around disease risk rather than visible symptoms. Consider factors like:
- Field history
- Crop stage
- Weather patterns
- Humidity
- Leaf wetness
Each of these factors influences when disease is most likely to develop. Regular scouting, along with emerging technologies like drone scouting, disease forecasting and spore monitoring, can help growers identify changing field conditions earlier and better time fungicide applications.
For example, warm temperatures combined with frequent rainfall or extended periods of moisture often create favorable conditions for white mold in beans or tar spot in corn. Knowing these factors help you better plan preventive actions.
“Fungicides need to be a planned treatment,” says Jack Schmitz, Wilbur-Ellis Territory Account Manager for North Dakota. “They need to be applied before any disease becomes established. We need to be proactive rather than reactive to keep as much green leaf tissue as possible.”
There’s no single fungicide program that fits every operation. Some growers may benefit from a single premium application, while others may see greater value from a planned multi-pass approach. Work with your agronomist to build a strategic fungicide program that fits your operation’s needs.
“There are a lot of fungicide options available,” Schmitz says. “Start by identifying the disease you’re targeting and the crop you’re protecting. From there, you can narrow your choices to products that are active on that disease and fit your operation.”
Get more from every fungicide application
Growers can maximize their fungicide investment with strategic applications, as well as product selection and crop adjuvant technologies to boost fungicide coverage and plant health.
“When conditions are favorable for disease, every application needs to count,” DeMorrow explains. “Coverage is one of the biggest factors that influences how well a fungicide performs.”
An Every Tank. Every Time® approach to crop adjuvant use can improve spray deposition, spreading, canopy coverage and droplet retention while helping reduce off-target movement. With application costs continuing to rise, maximizing the performance of every fungicide pass becomes even more important.
“Fungicides simply work better when an adjuvant is in the tank,” Schmitz says. “The goal is to improve coverage across the plant and get the fungicide where it needs to be.”
These complementary technologies include fungicide performance enhancers such as OBRONA® and crop adjuvants like ALLEVIATE®, which help growers get more out of their integrated disease management program. These tools don’t replace sound agronomic practices, but they can help maximize the value of every fungicide application.
When it fits into season plans, DeMorrow and Schmitz encourage growers to consider the added benefits of also using foliar nutrition or biological products alongside fungicide applications.
“A foliar nutrition application is something we can plan for from the beginning of the season,” DeMorrow says. “I like pairing it with a fungicide because you’re continuing to spoon-feed the plant. They go through a lot of stress, and healthy plants produce the best yield they possibly can.”
While some fungicides have additional plant health benefits built in, Schmitz adds that tank mixing is always an option.
“Mixing in a biological product is one way to help plants better tolerate stress during the growing season,” Schmitz says. “It’s going to kick-start the plant’s self-defense mechanism so it can better respond to stress as conditions change.”
Build a plan before disease pressure builds
As disease pressure shifts from season to season and timely applications become increasingly important, preparation becomes one of the greatest advantages a grower can have.
“It starts before the season ever gets busy,” DeMorrow says. “We’re working through those plans during the offseason so when the time comes to make a fungicide application, we’re ready.”
Ultimately, protecting yield potential isn’t about reacting to disease, it’s about anticipating it. By combining proactive planning, timely fungicide applications, effective spray coverage and trusted agronomic guidance, you can make more confident decisions that help protect yield potential and maximize the value of every application.
To learn more about building a proactive disease management strategy, connect with your local Wilbur-Ellis agronomist. Together, you can evaluate previous disease pressure, identify the right application timing, incorporate complementary technologies and build a season-long disease management plan tailored to your operation.