(upbeat music) - Hello everyone and welcome to "SUNUP."

I'm Lyndall Stout.

We have a lot of information packed into the show this week, including details on confirmation of the Asian longhorn tick in the state of Oklahoma at this time.

We'll have much more for you a little later in the show.

But first, another insect is leading to some problems in the corn crop in Oklahoma.

To get us up to speed, here's Dr. Maira Duffeck.

- So, in the last days of July, we started to receive calls from growers and crop consultants across the state of Oklahoma regarding a new problem that they observed in the corn fields.

On August 1st was the first day that I went to corn fields and I scouted, and I found symptoms of a new disease that is reported for the first time here in the state of Oklahoma.

That's corn stunt.

Corn stunt is a disease that was already reported and very well studied in South America, such as Mexico, and Brazil, Argentina, but it's the first time that this disease moved its way here to the state of Oklahoma.

So this disease is transmitted via insect, a leafhopper that's called Dalbulus maidis.

And this insect, when it's feeding the corn plant, ended up transmitting three pathogens that is associated with the symptoms of corn stunt, and if the symptoms that we see across the corn fields.

So I collected a corn plant from one of the fields that observed the first symptoms of the disease and the symptoms that the growers should be expecting that's caused by corn stunt is observed here in this plant.

So you may see here I have the completely corn plant in my hands that was cutted in the soil level.

And we can start to observe this decrease in the nodes of the corn plant.

And we can also see this very reddish color.

We need to pay attention because reddish color can be also caused by nutrient deficiency.

But in this case is the same symptomology that we observed that's caused by corn stunt.

And corn stunt, the name stands by itself because the corn plant start to be stunt in the field and decrease the size and then doesn't really produce the most important part of the corn plant, that is the ears that's going to produce grain.

That is the goal of the corn production, right?

So, the main symptoms that you can observe is the decrease of the inner nodes, the decrease in yielding in the end of the season, and also this very reddish color associated with the leafs of the corn plant.

And the pathogens that are associated with this disease, they're systemic.

They move in the phloem of the plant.

So when the leafhopper is feeding the corn plants, it's going to transmit the pathogens associated with the disease, and after the pathogens are already inside the plant, there is no management strategy that's recommended.

Fungicides not gonna do anything because this is not caused by fungi.

And then we don't have any product available that's going to mitigate the symptoms of the disease.

So, the main strategy that we can use to prevent and to manage disease in the field is try to decrease the population of the vector that is the corn leafhopper.

For more information about corn stunt and the corn leafhoppers in the state of Oklahoma, visit the SUNUP website.

- We're joined now by our new OSU Extension entomologist, Dr. Ashleigh Faris.

And Ashleigh, before we jump into that new corn disease, you're actually new to the university.

So tell us a little bit more about yourself.

- Sure, so I'm coming from Texas A&M University and there I was a teaching professor in the entomology department.

But my background prior to that was in field crop insects.

So, I worked in South Texas with Texas A&M AgriLife at the research station there in Corpus Christi with the invasive sorghum aphid, then known as the sugarcane aphid and all the natural enemies associated with that pest.

- And your husband is actually our new livestock entomologist as well.

- Yeah, yeah, so Dr. Jonathan Cammack is my husband, and so he's having an exciting time right now working with the Asian longhorn tick.

But we're both enjoying our time here in Oklahoma and feel pretty welcome, so thanks.

- And he's on later in the show and we'll learn more about that.

- Yes.

- So let's dive right into it.

We just heard from Maira, what this, is it the leafhopper?

Is that what it's called?

- Yes, so we have the corn leafhopper.

The scientific name is gonna be Dalbulus maidis.

So, the adult insect is gonna be yellow in color.

Their size is pretty small as we'll see with some of the samples from the sport trap.

But when we're looking for this insect, it's hard to notice because it likes to hide in the shade and it'll actually hide on the underside of leaves, sometimes the long end of the nation of the leaf itself, too.

Other things to notice about it, the nymphs, they're going to be light green in color and the eggs, unfortunately, they're not gonna be able to be seen by the naked eye.

And so the thing with this pest is that it comes up through wind aided movement through from Mexico and it can actually travel quite a distance on its own through flight.

- So, as Maira mentioned, the way that this vector spreads this disease is actually quite interesting.

So, talk a little bit more about that.

- So, whenever this vector feeds, this corn leafhopper, what it does is it feeds on the corn plant.

So, it actually can cause damage to our plants in two ways.

It can actually suck out a lot of the nutrients and juices that it has inside of the plant.

So, that can cause problems for plant health.

So when the insect feeds and it acquires the pathogen, it takes about.

- Three weeks before it's able then to transmit that pathogen to another corn plant.

- As Mara mentioned, you're mainly seeing this in the panhandle right now in the state.

- So we're seeing the insect in the panhandle right now.

We're just starting to see early signs of it.

So some of the fields that we've scouted a little bit further south and more central in the state, we've actually seen large populations of this insect vector.

And when we've seen those populations, we were already also seeing signs of those disease.

And so it can take 30 days after that insect that's infected feeds on the plant for those symptoms to show up in the plant.

And so that's the tricky part, one of the challenges that we're facing.

- And that's one of the many challenges with this insect, right?

Because there's not really a management strategy to effectively deal with them.

- Correct.

So here in Oklahoma, we have a few different unique things about the state and how we actually work with our corn.

So remember, this insect originated out of Mexico and it's moved up here through wind-aided movement.

And then if it's been found in Texas, which it has this season, here in Oklahoma, this is actually the first time we've documented it.

So if we think about insect biology side, the female can actually lay anywhere between five to 15 of her eggs per day.

And females can live for approximately about a month at a time.

So she's already quite prolific in her reproduction.

They only reproduce in corn, but they have the ability to actually overwinter in other types of grasses.

So we're thinking about things like Johnson grass, gamma grasses, and we've also seen from the literature, evidence that it may even overwinter in wheat.

So those are just a couple of them.

The other challenges we have, we really don't know much about what this insect is going to do in the state.

So when we look at how management strategies occur south of us, in Mexico, they actually grow corn continuously.

And so the way they're managing this insect is per crop.

They're spraying five to six times and that economically is not viable.

And that's also likely what's leading to some of the resistance problems that they're seeing in South America.

So not something that we wanna bring and see here in Oklahoma or even around the US.

- So right now, it does seem like it's kind of isolated even though that there's not much of a management strategy, but you and your team are actually getting out in the state to still get out and look to see if the disease is popping up and in other areas, right?

- Definitely.

So Dr. Dufbeck and I are actually going out.

We're still monitoring for the insects so that we can see where it is establishing, where it has spread to.

We're also looking for the signs of disease, and we're even gonna be looking at ways that maybe the sunset can persist in some of these overwintering habitats.

One other thing to mention is that Corteva Agrisciences, they've actually been doing some studies on the industry side of things to look at how effective and efficient the corn leafhopper is at being a vector.

And they've actually found that it could take maybe just one to two leafhoppers to actually cause severe problems in the field.

So we don't know if that's going to hold true for here.

We do know that there are other states in the US that have this leafhopper in the past.

So, California, Arizona, our neighbors in Arkansas, and also Florida and Louisiana and I believe Mississippi is also where this insect has been found in the past too.

- So it's something new but definitely not new worldwide.

- Correct.

I think for us, what we can say is, it has the potential to move northward and Oklahoma just happened to be the next place that it moved to.

And so one thing that Dr. Dufbeck and I talked about in our e-pest alert is considering that this might need to be an area wide or regional type of management strategy to where we can help slow and possibly even reduce the spread any further north.

- Alright, thanks Ashley.

Dr. Ashley Ferris, OSU extension entomologist here at Oklahoma State University.

(upbeat music) - Wes Lee here, and welcome to the Mesonet Weather Report.

August is not known to be one of the wettest months of the year, but sometimes Mother Nature changes things up.

Sometimes thunderstorms can trail or train each other and drop tremendous amounts of rain on an area.

Last weekend, this happened, dropping five, six or more inches of rain in central and east central areas.

This five-day map from midweek shows most Mesonet sites other than the far southwest saw decent rainfall.

The dark red splotches on the map show where these training rain events happened.

Our soil was extremely dry before the event, near the bottom end of the scale on our fractional water index maps.

Now you can see where these two heavy rain events changed things on this map, looking at the 10 inch depth.

Green, point nines and ones, the top end of the scale are now common in the central part of the state.

I like to look at the fractional water index because I get a feeling of how deep the rainfall percolated into the soil.

Here at our Washington site that received five plus inches of rain, all of our sensor depths recovered to great levels.

Comparing this to the site of Breckenridge where only about a half inch of rain was recorded, soil moisture didn't make it down past a few inches.

- Gary is up next with some changes to the latest drought map.

- Thanks, Wes, and good morning, everyone.

Well, what a weekend that was.

We had a record rainfall from, really, Northwest Oklahoma down through Central Oklahoma, and another swath of record rainfall from North Central down through East Central Oklahoma.

So that three-day period we saw some drought to get eradicated, but simply not enough.

Let's get to the new map and see where we're at.

We can see where those swaths of rain really did paint a path through Northwestern, through Central Oklahoma, and again, as I said, North Central through East Central Oklahoma.

We will do some more improvements next week.

We're sort of limited to a one-category improvement each week on the Drought Monitor.

But unfortunately, we also had some intensification down across Southwest Oklahoma and we saw that area of severe drought start to grow once again.

Also, a little bit of more moderate drought in South Central and also far Southeastern Oklahoma.

That does show up on the 30-day rainfall map from the Oklahoma Mesonet.

Again, from Northwestern down through Central Oklahoma and up there in the Northeastern part of the state.

Two really good swaths of four, to six, to even as much as 10 inches of rainfall.

Localized areas had even more.

Both of those locations, those swaths really took care of drought in those regions.

But unfortunately, you can see all that blue area in Southwest Oklahoma.

That's an area where we simply didn't get any... Hardly any rainfall, but simply not enough.

And we look at the percent of normal rainfall map for that same timeframe.

Pretty easy to see the problem areas, especially Southwest Oklahoma.

Over the last 30 days, much of that area has seen less than 25% of normal rainfall.

In some cases, less than 10% of normal rainfall.

How does this drought manifest in the physical world?

Well, simply put, it really kills all that vegetation.

Makes it go dormant, turns the ground yellow.

Unfortunately, we are seeing that across South Central and parts of Southwest Oklahoma, especially across Southwest Oklahoma, where we do see this Relative Greenness map from the OK Fire Program of the Mesonet.

Really, just no green vegetation in that area to speak of.

And really, that corner of the state just looks like a... Look would like it would in winter.

So, not good for that part of the state.

And that's why we saw that intensification from moderate to severe drought.

We could use a few more weekends like that last one.

Not with the flooding, but with all those good rains.

Don't see it coming up over the next week or two, but you never know, it might be just around the corner.

That's it for this time.

We'll see you next time on the Mesonet Weather Report.

(lighthearted music) - The Asian longhorned tick has been confirmed in Oklahoma in the last couple of weeks, and joining us now to talk about it is Dr. Jonathan Cammack, our OSU Extension Livestock Entomologist.

Jonathan, kind of dive in and tell us what has happened so far and a little bit about this tick.

- Sure, so over the past couple of weeks, we have received news that the Asian longhorned tick, Haemaphysalis longicornis, also known as the longhorned tick or bush tick, depending on where you're at in the world, has now been confirmed to be present in Oklahoma.

What we know at this point is that animals that made it to a sail barn in Missouri were found to have the tick present on them.

And so there has been some collaborative effort between ODAF and OSU working to try to figure out where those populations of ticks might be present within the state and how prevalent they might be.

- One county identified so far.

But this has prompted agencies to start working together in Oklahoma because you do think it's gonna spread farther West.

- That's right, and it's kind of odd that it was found in Mayes County, which is not one of our border counties.

So this tick is already present in Arkansas and Missouri.

So the likelihood that it's present in some additional counties may be further east within the state is relatively high because we know these ticks can be moved through the environment by wildlife.

- Why is this happening now in Oklahoma?

- Right, so the tick was first confirmed in the United States in 2017, but we now know that it was likely here a few years earlier than that and has since been moving westward across the country from those original locations on the East Coast.

And they're getting onto wildlife, maybe birds, raccoons, deer, things like that.

And also cattle, other domestic animals like pets, and they're just being moved through the environment.

- So, what does it do to livestock in particular?

Why should ranchers be concerned and what do they kind of need to do at this stage?

- Okay, yeah, so we've got some... A couple of different things that can happen, right?

So this is a blood-feeding organism like other ticks.

So they're going to be taking blood meals from those animals.

These ticks are very small, so they can be quite numerous in number on cattle.

And if those populations are high enough, they can actually stress the animals or even cause them to lose so much blood that, in the case of potentially young animals, old animals, or maybe animals that are already sick, we could have death due to blood loss or exsanguination.

So there are three things about its biology that are making it problematic.

One, they're a lot smaller than the ticks that we're used to seeing.

So, the adults of this species are maybe about half the size of a adult lone star tick, which is kind of one of our most common ticks within Oklahoma.

So they're small and it can make them hard to see.

- The second reason that they're problematic is how they reproduce.

So, they reproduce asexually.

So, the males and females don't have to find each other in the environment.

And then the third reason is the very large number of host species that they have so far been identified from.

Were up to about 150 species of host animal ranging from, you know, birds to mammals, pets to livestock, and even humans.

- In terms of your cattle herd, what kind of guidance are you giving to producers right now for prevention?

- Right, so we need to follow the same kind of protocols that we're using for other pets species.

So, if you're already using some sort of acaricide or pesticide to help control ticks on your animals, keep doing that.

What we know so far is that most of these products that are already available on the market and labeled for tick control are effective against the longhorn tick.

We can also do things within the environment to help make it unsuitable.

Keeping grass mowed or keeping brush cleared, kind of eliminate those kind of vegetation habitats that they're going to be spending time in.

One of the most important things producers can do right now to help prevent the spread of this is to keep from moving animals.

So, if you have the ability to not move animals from one location to another, that's going to be one of our best things that we can do to help limit the spread of this tick throughout the environment.

- Okay, Jonathan, thanks for your time.

Of course, more information, I'm sure as this continues to develop.

And for more information and a link to your local county extension office, just go to sunup.okstate.edu.

Big news, this past week for the Weed Improvement Program at OSU in the form of $6 million in gifts to help pay for new greenhouses.

Current facilities were built in the fifties and sixties and do not meet the needs of today's scientists.

Oklahoma Grains Incorporated has pledged 5 million and the Oklahoma Wheat Commission $1 million to build the $10 million Agronomy Discovery Center at the agronomy farm on the perimeter of campus in Stillwater.

OSU scientists have commercialized 36 new varieties in the past 25 years.

OSU wheat is now planted on seven out of 10 acres in the state.

(upbeat music) - Hello, I'm John Michael Riley, agricultural economist here at Oklahoma State University to talk about crop markets this week.

And we'll start off with the WASDE report.

It was released on August 12th Monday, and the report was quite a surprise for the soybean market.

If we look at what was going on there, we had some big adjustments in regard to both acres and yield, which kind of trickled down into a larger ending stocks.

Coming into the report, trade expected those numbers to be more in line with what we saw in July, and the report released in this August showed that not only were acres increased, we had acres closer to what we were experiencing in that expected plantings report.

USDA lowered soybean acres in the June acres report.

And then this August WASDE number came in a little bit higher, closer to that prospective plantings report.

So, not only did we get more acres, we also saw an increase in yield.

Market has been expecting that, you know, the weather throughout the growing season has been very favorable for corn and beans.

And we saw soybeans come in with a yield of 53.2 bushels per acre.

That's an increase of 1.2 from the last month's report.

So, on demand side for soybeans, we experienced, you know, a few changes there, but nothing really drastic.

Nothing really to overcome the higher acreage and higher yield, which leads to more production.

So, stocks to use for soybeans at 12.8% from this most recent report.

That's an increase from 10% from the number we saw in July.

So, really seismic changes across the board there on the supply side.

And that really sent markets in a tailspin.

Currently, prices are at 9.66 on futures and much lower than where they were at coming into the report.

Much lower than where they were at even this time last week.

So, a really big event here for soybeans from this most recent WASDE report.

If we shift our attention over to wheat and corn, I will say that those were probably very similar in how they were reported and relative to trade expectations.

Mostly, in line with what the market was looking for prior to the release of the August WASDE report.

A little bit lower on both the acres yield and overall production for both corn and wheat.

And then ending stocks largely in line with what trade was expecting.

So, no big news event relative, especially when you compare to what was going on with soybeans.

And ending stocks for wheat currently at 42%, that's a slight decline, about a percentage point decline from last month's report.

Corn 13.9, almost, a little bit lower than the 14% from the July report in terms of stocks to use.

So, again, no real huge changes there.

Ironically, corn saw quite a bit of a jump on the day as soon as that report was released.

A little bit of, I guess, you know, just some enthusiasm given that the overall stocks to use number was below the previous month's report.

But again, all of those numbers from both corn and wheat were in line with what the trade was expecting.

Wheat market at currently at about 5.60, 5.66, which is off of some recent highs of 5.80 last week, but still better than the last time that I was on here visiting with everyone about the wheat market at that time.

Corn still below four at 3.96 on the futures market.

Well, that's gonna wrap it up for The Market Monitor this week.

We'll see you in a few weeks.

- Good morning, Oklahoma, and welcome to "Cow-Calf Corner."

This week's topic, we revisit this every summer, it's just the concept of creep grazing of calves pre-weaning.

We know that historically creep feeding grain-based rations isn't always an economical practice in commercial cow-calf production.

A more useful practice probably in the purebred seed stock sector where we're trying to tap genetic potential.

And year to year, we always wanna evaluate what has the potential to be profitable.

But if we can creep graze, usually it is going to lead to more profit potential for a growing set of calves than creep feeding on a grain-based ration.

Now, what do we mean when we talk about creep grazing?

Basically giving growing calves access to some pasture, particularly, or hopefully, some higher-quality pasture than what we've got the rest of the cows given access to.

Nice thing about creep grazing, we don't have to have the input cost.

Usually, if we can figure out some way to put up a creep gate, maybe with slots in it about 18 inches wide, perhaps even using just access through a gate that stays open about that far, or potentially even hotwire set at a high enough level to let growing calves underneath, but not the mature cows.

If we've got some grass that we've deferred grazing on and we let the calves have access to it, a lot of research indicates we're gonna see up to a 10%, 20% bump in the growth of those calves.

In cool season times, we use a lot of wheat pasture, rye, oats, things like that, for the sake of creep grazing.

This time of year, a lot of people practicing this more likely to have Bermuda grass pasture, maybe some kind of millet or sorghum sedan.

We could use native grass, again, if we are just talking about letting the calves into it, the quality, the quantity of that forage that's available to the calves is gonna dictate probably how much bang for your buck that you actually get out of it.

In terms of improving pay weight, one of the things as we look at this in 2024, if we've got millet or some kind of sorghum sedan out there, with a lot of the heat stress and the spotty rainfall we've had going back over the last two or three months, I know I've got feedback from a lot of producers, dealing with it myself, we might have some nitrate levels in there that are a little beyond the safe level.

But if you've done a forage analysis and you've taken a look at what those nitrate levels are, as you break that down in increments and you actually get above 1,000 parts per million and keep bumping up into those higher-risk categories, what that forage analysis tells you is that you are at risk when you're talking about pregnant cows, potentially causing abortions, potentially decreasing reproductive performance.

And so calves are a safer bet if we're dealing with some lower levels of nitrates in a forage or sorghum to actually go in and graze that, do something positive with it, as opposed to the risk of turning cows out on it.

So just taking a look at creep grazing options 2024.

I hope this helps, and thanks for being with us on "Cow-Calf Corner."

(upbeat music) - Finally, today, a little ranching advice for our newcomers out there when it comes to ranch visits from your veterinarian.

- One of the main challenges as a veterinarian, if I go out to a new producer's operation, is evaluating their facilities.

One of the big challenges facilities that are not adequate, they don't have to be fancy, they just need to be functional and safe.

So encourage producers, particularly those that are maybe looking at either starting an operation and don't have facilities currently or taking a look at what you do have and modifying those to visit with your veterinarian on how best to meet the needs of what you're gonna need to be doing at the operation when it comes to animal health, treating, medicating.

I always joke with some of my previous clients, like, "I'm only gonna catch a cow if she runs through my loop.

I'm not much of a roper."

And so we've gotta have good facilities in order to be able to be effective in treating these animals.

(upbeat music) - And that'll do it for our show this week.

A reminder, you can see "SunUp" anytime on our website, and also follow us anytime on YouTube and our social media channels.

I'm Lindel Stout.

Have a great week, everyone.

And remember, Oklahoma agriculture starts at "SunUp."

(bright music)