Figure 1. Northern Corn Leaf Blight (NCLB) in a field near Nickerson, NE (Dodge County).
Figure 2. Northern Corn Leaf Blight lesion in Saunders County (Taken by A. Nelson, Nelson Precision Agronomics).
Most growers and agronomists are familiar with gray leaf spot, but another less known leaf fungal pathogen that I am starting to see in Dodge County is called Northern corn leaf blight (NCLB) caused by Exserohilum turcicum. Right now, the the incidence of NCLB is low and the severity is low to moderate, suggesting previous management and hybrid selection may be key factors.
Tamra Jackson, UNL Extension Plant Pathologist, wrote a nice article about this disease and it’s management, so click here. I encourage you to contact your seed corn representative to get a list of resistance ratings for NCLB on your hybrids planted and scout the more susceptible hybrids as soon as possible and more frequently. Purdue University has a nice written publication on Northern Corn Leaf Blight as well. Below is a short 2 minute YouTube video where Tamra discusses Northern Corn Leaf Blight (NCLB).
Crop Tech Cafe – Fremont, NE: Feeding a world through improved cropping systems & emerging ag technologies
