Viewing post #1041338 by sooby

CaliFlowers said:
This was the first I've heard about this growth-enhancing effect. I've found a few research papers which compared wheat production between treated and untreated fields, but the increases in production seemed to be simply the result of healthier plants. I wonder how many people will be tempted to use these fungicides as photosynthesis enhancers. In order to verify those effects, a controlled study would need to be done using rust-free plants, or plants treated with another family of fungicides as a control group.

Yes, you'd have to separate the effect of simply controlling the rust since rust itself decreases photosynthesis. Given the cost of the strobilurins I would have thought a bit more attention to fertilizer and other cultural practices would be more cost effective for improving plant performance minus rust, not to mention that there are label restrictions on the usage and the number of total and consecutive times one can use strobilurin fungicides because of their high risk of causing fungicide resistance.

CaliFlowers said:
A couple of other thoughts regarding the soaps. If they prove to be effective, it would be nice to know by what means they work. I would guess that by thoroughly wetting the spores, their ability to be blown around is diminished, which might go a long way toward reducing the spread of rust. Or, it might be that by wetting the spores, they are encouraged to "sprout" right there at the original infection site, much like pollen can be prematurely sprouted with moisture and rendered ineffective.

Dishwashing liquid was tested in a university research study for daylily rust and was relatively effective, which is where the idea came from initially. They didn't look into how it worked as far as I recall but there are commercially available fungicidal soaps so the mode of action may be mentioned somewhere.