In continuation to the series of webinars being organized by the Institute, Indore, the ICAR-Indian Institute of Soybean Research, Indore organized a webinar on “Management of diseases of soybean in the era of climate change” on Monday with the involvement of 82 participants including progressive farmers of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar.
On this occasion, distinguished speaker Laxman Singh Rajput (Scientist,Plant Pathology) of Indian Institute of Soybean Research, Indore explained about the major diseases that occur in soybean crop grown by farmers of various states along with ways to manage them. According to him, the identification of the disease is very important in absence of which incur heavy losses to the soybean crop as well as increased cost of cultivation without monetary benefit.
He said that yellowing of leaves in soybean is not always due to the infection of Yellow Mosaic Virus. We should also understand the situation that sometimes leaves turn yellow also due to excessive rain to which consider it as a disease.
Laxman also said on this occasion that, for the last 2-3 years, an outbreak of a disease called anthracnose or pod blight is increasingly being seen in soybean crop of Malwa region, due to which a lot of loss has been seen in soybean yield. He therefore, appealed the farmers to reduce the area under JS 95-60, a most popular variety which is already susceptible to pod blight disease.
Alternatively, he suggested to grow other soybean varieties like JS 20-69 and JS 20-98 which are resistant to these diseases. During the webinar, Dr Laxman Singh Rajput also discussed different measures for control of white fly, a vector for yellow mosaic virus along with information about the symptoms and control measures for other diseases like yellow mosaic disease, pod blight, myrothecium leaf spot and rhizoctonia aerial blight.