 I'm Michael Bunch on the plant pathologist at the NDSU Carrington Research Center. One of the major disease issues that we've been working on for many years now is root rot on field peas. Field peas are impacted by fusarium root rot, which causes dark brownish red, even brownish black lesions on the epicodal and taproot, and ephanomyces root rot, which causes more subtle symptoms. Very early in the season you'll see that the outer cortical tissues will slough off and they'll have this yellowish look to them and they'll be very easy to rub off with your finger, but again on the epicodal and down into the taproot, but primarily the epicodal. And then fusarium wilt is a third of these root diseases and fusarium wilt actually infects the vascular tissues and it'll cause this brick red discoloration of the vascular tissues in the taproot and the epicodal and sometimes even extend a little bit into the stem. These three diseases combined are a very critical constraint on field pea production in North Dakota and the surrounding areas. In fields that have a history of field pea production or lawnmow production, the root rods build up and with time they get to a point where they're a significant problem. At this point there are no management strategies available for managing these diseases and so we've been looking at various strategies. The three strategies that we have found to have promise are crop rotation, planting date, and seed treatment. And the results thus far suggest you have to use all three in conjunction. Now the theory is that crop rotation doesn't work because the phantomiasis and fusarium are both long-lived pathogens that persist a long time in the soil. Fusarium has multiple alternate hosts, but in practice what we've found is it does work. There appears to be crop specialization for the fusarium species and a phantomiasis, even though it persists in the soil, must degrade to a certain degree. What I'm standing right now is a long-term crop rotation study that we began seven years ago. We're now in year seven of this study. And what we're evaluating is growing field peas every second year, every third year, every fourth year, or every sixth year. Two years ago we were able to compare a two-year versus a four-year rotation. What we found is that rotating out of peas for three years gained us a significant increase in yield and a moderate reduction in root rot. But the big thing is that the reduction in root rot was enough to let the peas get ahead. When we had peas growing every two years with no seed treatment, we had 24 bushel and acre peas. Awful. When we grew peas once every four years, we're up to 35, 36 bushel peas. When we added a fungicide seed treatment, targeting both fusarium and a phantomiasis, in this case, this would have been everglow energy plus entego soil at 0.3 fluid ounces, we moved up to 41 bushel and acre. 41 bushel and acre is acceptable. And so by combining crop rotation with fungicide seed treatment, we were able to get acceptable field pea yields. What we're evaluating this year is a two-year rotation, three-year rotation, and a six-year rotation. And we look forward to seeing those results. Again, we are looking at them with non-treated seed versus a base seed treatment targeting fusarium, in this case obvious, at 4.6 fluid ounce per 100 weight, versus a seed treatment targeting fusarium and a phantomiasis, which would be obvious plus entego soil at 0.3 fluid ounces. The other strategy that we are evaluating is planting date. Both fusarium and a phantomiasis are warm soil pathogens. They are favored by warm soils. And the later you plant, the more severe they are. And this is something we observed just by luck, because when we planted root rot studies over time, because seed came in late or because we were interrupted by weather, what we will consistently see is the later we planted these studies, the worse the root rot was. And so since 2017, we've been running replicated studies where we actually randomize the planting dates and we evaluate the agronomic response of peas. What we have seen consistently is that planting earlier reduces your root rot. And starting last year, we extended these studies to on-farm sites in western North Dakota. And in those sites, we saw the same thing we've seen here in Carrington. You plant earlier, you reduce your root rot. What we did learn last year is you also have to use a little bit of reason with how early you go, of course. On our very earliest planting days, we got hit by a significant snow storm after we planted and temperatures had dropped down to 19 Fahrenheit one night. Well, of course, that was too early for the peas agronomically. They still yielded okay, but we actually maximized our yields by planting just after that. And so in this case, we maximized our yields when we have planted in the soils that have averaged 44 degrees Fahrenheit day and night over the seven day period after planting. And when the soil temperatures are lower than that, we maximized our yields by, again, waiting until the soils warm up just a little bit. Root rot is critical, but it's not the only factor that impacts yield. But again, in order to maximize your agronomic potential of peas, you need to, and our data show this very strongly, plant early, not when you have a significant risk of a severe freeze, but after that, okay, and maintain a decent crop rotation practice at least three years out of peas and use a fungicide seed treatment. Okay, our response to the fungicide seed treatments targeting fusarium root rot. In this case, this would be obvious from BSF. When we planted early, we averaged across four study locations last year, two in Western North Dakota, one no-till and one conventional till in Carrington. We added average seven bushel yield response using obvious when we planted in mid April. When we planted in early May, we averaged a six bushel yield response from using obvious. When we planted in mid May, we averaged a two bushel yield response from using obvious as a seed treatment. Obvious targets Pythium, Fusarium, and Rhizoctonia. And early planting days are very susceptible, particularly to Rhizoc and Pythium. Okay. When we added Intego solo, which has efficacy against the phantom icies, we saw an average over, now this is six trials conducted over three years, including two on-farm sites in Western North Dakota. We saw an average of a three bushel yield response when we planted in mid April, four bushel yield response when we planted in early May, and a six bushel yield response when we planted in mid May. And the reason why you get the best, best response out of Intego solo when you're planting later is because a phantom icies is most severe in warm soils. And so in short, if you're choosing a fungicide seed treatment, when you're planting very early, you're likely to get a very good response out of it using a packaged fungicide seed treatment, such as obvious, ever go energy, vibrance, max pulse, or other alternatives. And we found them all to work well. And those seed treatments are very important when you plant early. When you're planting later, you might consider adding Intego solo. And Intego solo has efficacy against the phantom icies and can help mitigate the impact of phantom icies in those late planted peas. Thank you for your time. For more information, Google NDSU Carrington, click on Plant Pathology, and you'll find a link there that shows additional data on this subject. Scroll down to the part that addresses field pea root rot. Thank you.