DES MOINES, Iowa — According to experts, over 60 Iowa counties’ corn fields are infected with the Southern Rust fungus. Farmers are busy working hard to combat the spreading disease.

Matt Chambers, a Farmer from Hamlin, Iowa, said that over the past week, his fields have been infected by the Southern Rust.

“I was in a field a week ago last Sunday, and there was no evidence in southern rust. And at that time, I did see the map that it was just east of here in Guthrie County. So I was it was on my radar. I walked in the same field, same spot this morning. And it’s it was an explosion of southern rust just everywhere, mostly in the lower canopy,” Chambers said.

Southern Rust and Tar Spot are fungal diseases that spread through spores in the air.

Dan Bjorklund, a Technical Agronomy Advisor at LANDUS, said that July’s weather made perfect conditions for Southern Rust and Tar Spot to spread.

“The two diseases that we’ve been seeing are Tar Spot and Southern Rust, and they are carried by the wind and spores they land on. The corn leaves, the wet corn leaves, and then that’s how they in fact the plant. So wet saturated leaves for 4 to 6 hours is what really gets it going in when it rains like every two or three days, like we had in July. It just was the perfect storm,” Bjorklund said.

Chambers said he will need to apply additional fungicide to his fields to reduce losses due to disease.

“Now, with the amount of disease that we’re seeing, it’s more like ten days to two weeks, probably, that it that it’s going to protect these fields. And so, you know, it’s likely in order to get maximum yield, we’re going to have to spray maybe twice. We’ve never had to spray twice before,” Chambers said.

Bjorklund has been researching drone surveillance technology that could help reduce the spread of disease in corn fields.

“If you think about it for next year, if we could actually get to catch disease early and then take a spray drone out and just spray three acres or five acres of the field instead of having to treat the whole thing, you could actually reduce input costs for the farmer, knock these diseases out earlier. To me, that is the beauty of this program that we should look at going forward, because right now people find disease in an area and they spray the entire field,” Bjorklund said.