Timing the Fungicide Application on Pinto Beans

During NDSU’s Getting it Right: Dry Beans Seminar, Extension Plant Pathologist Michael Wunsch talked about the latest research in fungicide spray application for pinto beans. “When should you spray?” asked Wunsch. “Just spraying because they’ve got a bloom is not optimal so there are tradeoffs in your timing.” For pinto beans, Wunsch said the fungicide application is linked to the percentage of plants with initial pods. “That’s really the percent of plants with dead blossoms and it’s easy to go to multiple locations in your field and look at ten plants in a row in each spot and see how many of those have those initial pods.”