How important are inoculants in disease control/plant health?
Mike Blanding. Achieving a good start with any plant indented for crop production is essential. By applying an inoculant and/or seed treatment to legume crops enables the seedling to stay off threatening diseases and thrive under normal growing conditions. The ability of legumes to ‘fix’ their own nitrogen allows for rapid growth and ideal plant health thus making the plant less susceptible to disease. For optimum nodulation, producers should inoculate every time they plant a legume. The addition of a seed treatment such as a fungicide along with the inoculant has proven to be beneficial as well under certain stressful growing conditions. NGA. What diseases should farmers be most concerned about protecting their seeds against? MB. There are number of diseases that can affect legume crops from seeding to harvest. It is always ideal to continually scout the crop to look for the first signs or indicators of crop disease. Disease pressure varies greatly depending upon the regions in which
