The Twitter accounts @corndisease and @soydisease are a place for farmers agronomists, crop consultants, and specialists to collectively document iPiPEand track corn and soybean diseases this growing season. To help out with the effort, just take a photo of the crop disease when you’re out scouting fields and then tweet the photo to @corndisease or @soydisease with the name of the disease, and the county and state it’s found in. The hope is to use tweets of crop disease photos from around the country for future disease tracking and prevention purposes.

So far this growing season, southern rust has been confirmed in the following states: Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia and Florida. Visit the @corndisease account for the most current updates and view the southern rust distribution map on the iPiPE website. Recent soybean disease findings include: bacterial blight in Wisconsin and Iowa, and Rhizoctonia root rot in Iowa. Look for soybean disease updates in your area here.

The @soydisease Twitter account will also giving away a free field guide each week to the first person that can correctly identify a soybean disease in iPiPEa photo that will be posted each Wednesday.

This effort is part of the Integrated Pest Information Platform for Education and Extension (iPiPE).

Originally posted by Iowa State University.