Exciting Improvements to the Soybean Cyst Lab at Ag View FS

When producers think that they have Soybean Cyst Nematode (SCN) under control, they need to realize this: for the state of Illinois, SCN continues to cost growers millions and millions of dollars every year, and is still considered the number one yield robber in soybeans. In certain cases, the decision in handling SCN populations may not be as simple as planting resistant varieties. Before doing so, you need to know your population numbers with an egg count test, and possibly the SCN Type of the population before making any management decisions.

New SCN Egg Counts

The first new test that we have implemented is the SCN Egg Count test. In the past we, as well as many other private labs, have counted cysts to determine SCN populations in fields because of their ease of extracting and counting. Unfortunately counting cysts does not tell us much about the population, other than that they exist, for these two reasons:

• Cysts are the dead females and do not infect anything. Cysts house eggs that will hatch and  produce the young nematodes that will eventually infect the next soybean crop.
   
• Egg numbers within each cyst may vary anywhere from very few to 500 eggs, depending on the soybean varieties previously grown in that field. Also, older cysts tend to contain fewer eggs than younger cysts.
   

So to combat this, our lab now extracts SCN eggs from the cysts and count these to give an accurate count of what is in the sample submitted. All samples that are submitted will now be analyzed through egg counting, unless cyst counts are specifically requested for detection purposes. Our staff is trained according to University standards to ensure a quality analysis.