Soybean Rust Confirmed in Kentucky, Near Illinois Border

From Illinois Farm Bureau ~ October 11, 2006


Soybean rust was detected on soybeans for the first time ever in Kentucky last Friday, according to a report on USDA's Soybean Rust website. One of the positive finds was in Union County, KY, directly across the Ohio River from Pope and Gallatin counties in Illinois.
The find was in the corner of an otherwise mature sentinel plot located at the University of Kentucky Research and Education Center in Princeton in Caldwell County. Incidence was about 40-50% and severity around 10%.
Between Sunday and yesterday, SBR was detected at various levels in six additional Kentucky counties -- Christian, Hopkins, Lyon, Marshall, Todd, and Union. All of the finds, thus far, are in the lakes region of west Kentucky. Finds were in "mobile plots" except for the Caldwell and Union County finds, which were in sentinel plots. For all finds, the stage of pustules was mostly uniform. Officials say it appears that a large number of spores blew in sometime over the past two weeks and cut a pretty large swath in west Kentucky. Officials are in the process of looking to the west and east to see if an even larger area of spore deposition and infection may have occurred.
"This find will have absolutely NO impact on the 2006 soybean crop in Kentucky or anywhere else for that matter. In fact, soybean rust will 'go away' from Kentucky as soon as there is hard frost," University of Kentucky officials say.
Of the Kentucky counties where SBR was discovered, Union County is situated along the Ohio River across from Pope and Gallatin counties in Illinois.