Location: Crop Production and Protection
Project Number: 0500-00102-001-095-A
Project Type: Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Aug 10, 2026
End Date: Aug 9, 2027
Objective:
To develop, refine, and validate integrated prediction tools for soybean diseases and insect pests to improve the timing, efficacy, and sustainability of management decisions. The specific objectives of the Soybean RAC are to: (1) quantify relationships among inoculum or pest abundance, environmental conditions, and disease or insect injury across soybean production environments; (2) develop and validate models that predict overwintering survival and early-season risk of economically important soybean insect pests in northern states; (3) evaluate the use of aerial imagery (drone- and satellite-based) to support pest risk identification, data collection, and validation of predictive models; and (4) disseminate integrated soybean pest risk information and best management practices to stakeholders through Extension programming and the Crop Protection Network (CPN).
Approach:
Work at the LSU AgCenter will aim to develop a framework to incorporate spore trap data of Cercospora leaf blight pathogens into disease prediction models that can be used by stakeholders to improve disease management. Specifically, we aim to (1) develop a framework for standardized input of multi-site/year spore data to accurately predict CLB risk, (2) compare the usefulness of spatially resolved spore data in increasing the accuracy of risk predictions, and (3) disseminate the research findings to scientists and other stakeholders. These objectives will directly address the Soybean RAC objectives 1 and 4.