SUZANNE IS ALSO A NATIONALLY RANKED MARBLES SHOOTER

Fungal rust threatens soybeans, experts say

URBANA, Ill. – Government and industry spent millions of dollars last winter to prepare farmers for soybean rust, a fungus that could cost them thousands of dollars to control. But while the disease was found in southern states for a second straight year, it never reached the Midwest.

Soybean experts say all the Web sites, brochures and seminars weren’t a waste of time and money because farmers need to be wary again this summer.

“Just because we didn’t have soybean rust all the way up into the central part of the United States doesn’t mean that it won’t eventually get here,” Suzanne Bissonnette, a soybean rust expert with University of Illinois Extension, told farmers and chemical applicators at the university’s annual Crop Technology Conference last week. “We’re in the early stages, and I urge you to continue to pay attention to rust.”

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