Anthony Hanson, Extension Educator - Field Crops Integrated Pest Management (hans4022@umn.edu), Angie Peltier, Extension Educator - Field Crops, & Jochum Wiersma, Extension small grains specialist.
Since
2011, University
Minnesota Extension has conducted a small grains insect and disease field survey in western Minnesota as part of a collaboration with North Dakota State
University. This
effort has been funded by the Minnesota Wheat Research and Promotion
Council through wheat check-off dollars to inform producers and the
research
community of the presence of disease and pests
(Fig. 1). This effort relies on field locations volunteered by Minnesota wheat farmers.
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| Figure 1. Severe and widespread true armyworm infestations were found by scouts during late Julyin 2025 that resulted in yield loss due to defoliation or head clipping just prior to harvest. Photo: Jordan Hunnicutt, 2025 IPM scout. |
Through this program, UMN Extension gives individual alerts to growers and uses the scouting data to contribute to weekly
pest population maps that are produced jointly with NDSU's scouting
program (Fig. 2). The success of this program relies heavily on wheat
fields being volunteered by growers for UMN scouts to check during the
growing season, and we are hoping to expand the reach of this survey in
2025.
 |
| Figure 2. Percent plants infected with tan spot at sampled wheat fields during 2025. |
Rather
than relying on random fields to sample for insects and diseases, we
plan to visit only small grains fields that have been volunteered and we
have written permission to scout. If you would like to volunteer a field to contribute to these maps and get pest data sent to you, please visit: https://z.umn.edu/wheatipm2026. Barley, oats, and rye fields can also be submitted.
Typically, three scouts check fields weekly centered around Crookston, Moorhead, and Morris so
we can cover a continuous range of fields through the northwest and
west-central areas of the state. As a rough rule of thumb, scouts may
visit fields that are within a 1.5 hours drive of these locations,
though they may be able to travel farther depending on the number of
sites submitted in that location. If you also provide an email address, you will get weekly updates from late May through the beginning of July on
the insect and disease data found in your fields. Coordinates and data
from your field will be kept anonymous and will be not be identifiable
beyond the scale seen in Fig. 2.
Scouts also cover soybean
fields that are sampled randomly with support from the Minnesota Soybean Research & Promotion
Council. This especially helps as small grain scouting needs decline during portions of the growing season when soybean pest populations build.
During the last couple years of this survey, cereal leaf beetle
first-time detections in northwestern Minnesota have been especially
concerning since many of these fields had high enough populations to
cause economic yield loss. The first fields in 2023 were found by UMN
scouts in Clay, Norman, Mahnomen, and Red Lake counties followed by
additional finds in Marshall, Pennington, Otter Tail, and Grant counties
in 2024 (Fig. 3). Prior to this, cereal leaf beetle had not been found
in the survey in western Minnesota and had only been found in
southeastern counties prior to 2010 in low numbers. During a statewide
MN Dept. of Ag. 2010 survey, cereal leaf beetle was only found in
Goodhue County. It's unknown why this insect has not been found in
central counties yet, so volunteered fields from areas where there gaps
in this survey including south of Grant County and around Otter Tail and
Stearns counties would be especially helpful.
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| Figure 3. Cereal leaf beetle finds in Minnesota since 2010. 2023-24 finds are the first county detections found by UMN scouts. No new counties were added in 2025. |
In
areas where many fields are submitted, we
will select a subset of all submitted fields such that we have a good
representation across the region. We will inform you if one of your
fields has been selected. The anonymous data will be used to generate
the
weekly pest, and disease updates in cooperation with NDSU. If you
provide an email at submission, we will alert you to
any pest issues found in your field. Feel free to submit a planned
location even if the field hasn't been planted yet, and we can follow up
if there are changes to plans in that field.
If you would like to view past joint pest maps with UMN and NDSU, visit:
https://z.umn.edu/mn-ndsu-wheatipm.
Thank you for considering this request. Simply follow the link at the bottom to a Google Form to submit your field:Small Grains Field Submission Form
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