Agriscience Explained

On today’s episode we uncover some critical details about one of the most destructive and adaptable insect pests in corn: corn rootworm. It has been referred to as the billion dollar pest for several years, and the reality is it’s probably closer to the two billion dollar pest now in terms of damages.

To explore the impact and management of corn rootworm we are joined by Clint Pilcher, Ph.D., who leads the Technical Knowledge Solutions Team at Corteva Agriscience. We’ll also be hearing from North Central Iowan farmer Randy Madden. Randy offers a unique perspective not only as a producer but also from his experience working with Monsanto as part of their global production team after earning his PhD in seed physiology. He shares that despite high local demand for corn, the journey of continuous corn has certainly come with its own challenges. 
“ Journey is a very good word. I mean, it's obviously a trial and error and over the years we've added our own bulk anhydrous facility...Our high pH soils have proven to be real challenging in corn production as well and managing the insects like corn rootworm….The traits have made that much more achievable and sort of added tremendous value to continuous corn production system like we have now.” - Randy Madden
Scientists have been working on the corn rootworm problem for decades, but with every new solution, the insect continues to adapt. To drastically reduce populations, two steps will be critical including stewardship of the products that today have some efficacy against corn rootworm and getting everyone on the same page to be vigilant against this pest.
“ The most recent tool is RNAI…It is very effective in controlling the adult population, it will eventually kill the insect, but it's much more slow acting than the BTs in controlling that insect. And so you know that, in addition to adult beetle management, is still an effective way of controlling them.” - Clint Pilcher

A few takeaways from this episode: 
There is great significance in the concept of area wide management and how it can bring everyone together to control corn rootworm. It would be nice if all agronomic problems could be reduced to just a single product that solved them for good, but as we all know, that’s not how it works. Complex problems require more dynamic solutions. 
How impactful the RNAI technology is. Even though it’s not THE singular answer to corn rootworm, having a tool like this can be incredibly powerful if used properly and stewarded properly so that it remains viable for years to come. 
The importance of stewardship. It’s not just a buzzword, and Randy’s words really stuck with me: the industry needs to be doing more to make sure we are stewarding the products we have available to us today. Because as you just heard Clint say, any potential new solutions are going to take a LONG time to make their way onto the farm, and it’s going to take all of us in the industry doing our part to preserve what we have that still has some efficacy today. 

Agriscience Explained is brought to you by Corteva Agriscience and hosted by Tim Hammerich. This show is produced by Clint Pilcher, Rayda Krell and Ann Leonard. Jaime Hammerich and Grant Bolton edit these podcasts, and the music was composed by Dmitri Volkov. Subscribe for more Agriscience Explained: From Science to Solutions.

On today’s episode, we celebrate the end of our first full year of the podcast by taking a look back at some previous episodes in order to take a look forward into the future of agriscience. In the spirit of Agriscience Explained and the fact that we believe true ag innovation has to be farmer-led, we’ve invited an innovative farmer to join the show for this episode. 

Tim Nuss of Nuss Farms operates in Lodi, California. In addition to his day job on the farm, Tim also started a podcast called The Modern Acre with his brother Tyler about eight years ago. This weekly show that focuses on entrepreneurs in the ag industry also led them to launching something called AgList about a year ago. Tim is a great example of a farmer thinking differently about agricultural innovation. Our conversation connected very closely with several of our episodes we’ve done for this podcast this season.
“ A lot of farmers are in really challenging situations right now and they're exhausted with financials of the business and just getting through the year of really keeping yourself open to new ideas and having those conversations takes a lot of work and takes a mindset…You just have to keep that positive growth mindset and know that if you have a limited budget, like don't put innovation on the back burner. It still needs to be a part of the budget.” - Tim Nuss
Agriscience Explained hopes to not only emphasize innovation but to highlight that innovation doesn’t matter unless it can be applied. And in order to go from science to solution, effective communication has to happen. 

As any good entrepreneur does, beyond farming and beyond podcasting, Tim noticed an additional problem that needed a solution. Seeing this chaotic landscape of the ag biologicals market, Tim and his brother Tyler decided to launch a website called AgList. AgList helps farmers and agronomists filter through various biological products and find out what real users have to say about them. Companies pay to list their products on the platform so that they can be endorsed by customers who have firsthand experience with them. 
“ It's very hard for individual farmers to talk to a hundred different companies to see if their product works…. We just saw this as an opportunity where there's a lot of challenge to understand as a farmer what works for you. The landscape map is cool to look at, but it's really challenging….So kind of leveling the playing field, putting it on an independent platform to kind of be able to click through and understand what products are actually relevant for you.” - Tim Nuss
Previous Episodes Referenced: 
Agriscience Explained with Sam Eathington
Crucial Conversations About Biologicals in Agriculture
Unlocking Agriscience Innovation
Gene Editing: Pathway to Progress
Permanent Cover Crops Take Root
Science, Sustainability and the Art of Farming
Discovering Tomorrow’s Biotech Traits
Agriscience Explained is brought to you by Corteva Agriscience and hosted by Tim Hammerich. This show is produced by Clint Pilcher, Rayda Krell and Ann Leonard. Jaime Hammerich and Grant Bolton edit these podcasts, and the music was composed by Dmitri Volkov. Subscribe for more Agriscience Explained: From Science to Solutions.

On today's episode: Why did we see so much southern rust in the 2025 corn crop? We talk about this foliar disease, where it comes from, the impact it had on the crop and what farmers can do to better manage it going forward. We'll also explore some fascinating agriscience happening that will give farmers better protection against crop diseases like southern rust in the future.
To guide us through all of this, we're talking to Mark Jeschke, agronomy manager supporting the Pioneer brand at Corteva Agriscience. Mark has been with the company for 18 years and is currently based in Johnston, Iowa. He also farms with his family in Northern Illinois. Also joining the show is Pioneer field agronomist Carl Joern. Carl saw a lot of southern rust this past growing season in his area of northwest Indiana and northeast Illinois. He works directly with farmers in his role as a field agronomist and focuses on making sure they can make the most profit from Pioneer products.
“ Southern rust can be scary, especially if you don't have experience with it and when you have environmental conditions that stack the deck in its favor. There are fields across the Midwest this year that got sprayed with a fungicide and in three weeks that corn crop looked dead. And folks are trying to consider how to manage for a disease and how you invest in a crop that doesn't look like it's invested back in your operation…Like anything in farming, how you manage your operation has an impact on how pathogens proliferate and how different weed species grow or don't grow on your farm.” - Carl Joern
And while this year was bad and was a learning experience for many people, it’s not a new disease. Mark Jeschke remembers starting to see it in 2016 and says it has shown up earlier and earlier in the last couple of years, creating a bigger management concern. This threat can become a huge issue, taking away yield and potential revenue at a time when margins are thin. But could some of the modern gene editing tools that we’ve talked about in previous episodes of this podcast potentially help reduce this risk? Jeschke definitely sees this as a possibility.
“ What our scientists have done is take multiple disease resistance genes and stack those all together. So you're delivering multiple genes for resistance to different diseases all at once…It's a concept that can be expanded going forward that can add more resistance genes to it…So it can be iterated and improved upon over the years. So that's very exciting.” - Mark Jeschke
A few takeaways from today's episode: 
A better understanding of southern rust: where it comes from, what causes it to spread and some management tips
For as sophisticated as modern farming is, there are curveballs every year. Sometimes the timing doesn’t work out to address them reactively. That’s why the work of agriscience innovation is never finished to create better solutions
Multi-disease resistance or the disease super locus is really an exciting development. This is a very real and timely example of where gene editing technology could address a problem that farmers have no way of knowing in advance if they need to prioritize. 

Agriscience Explained is brought to you by Corteva Agriscience and hosted by Tim Hammerich. This show is produced by Clint Pilcher, Rayda Krell and Ann Leonard. Jaime Hammerich and Grant Bolton edit these podcasts, and the music was composed by Dmitri Volkov. Subscribe for more Agriscience Explained: From Science to Solutions.

Today’s episode dives deep into creating a comprehensive and integrated approach to weed management. Agriscience has proven that we can make effective products, but can we make those effective products last? This process of preserving our latest and greatest tools is called stewardship. In this episode we take a deep dive into what it looks like to create solutions with stewardship in mind from the outset by taking a look at the Enlist program. 

Bill Belzer joins us as the lead of the Stewardship Team for Corteva Agriscience based in Johnston, Iowa. Belzer and his team work across seed, crop protection and seed applied technologies to make sure stewardship is at the forefront. We are also joined by John Davis, a farmer in Delaware, Ohio. Davis shares his experiences as both a multigenerational farmer in the area, and a Pioneer Rep on the front lines of serving other farms in the area. Davis says when it comes to challenges they have to face in farming, weed control is certainly toward the top of the list. 

“ One of the things that listeners can appreciate and farmers especially know is that they're in a race against biology. We think about managing land is managing the sun and then the biological ecosystem that goes with that. And within that ecosystem you've got weeds, you've got insects, you have fungal organisms, and they're always on the move and they're always shifting…. So growers are faced with staying ahead of biology.” - Bill Belzer

The team at Corteva Agriscience took an industry-leading approach to stewardship with the Enlist program. Think of the Enlist Weed Control System and Enlist Ahead as a means of preserving a program that provides long-term weed control. But for this to happen, it’s going to take a multitude of decisions from everyone involved. Not just researchers, but agronomists, farmers, and other trusted partners that all contribute to agronomic and economic decisions on the farm. 

“ Probably the most difficult thing is when you're sitting across the table from a grower, you've got your sales rep hat on and you're trying to encourage them to do the stewardship program and use the right product. It comes down to dollars and everyone believes they can do something less expensive, but you try to work through that and explain to them.” - John Davis

A few takeaways from this episode: 

There’s a whole lot more to stewardship than I’d ever considered. And it starts much earlier than I had considered. 
Stewardship goes way beyond reducing weed resistance to Enlist herbicides. Long-term efficacious weed control is the goal here.
This really does take a commitment from all involved. Everyone needs to understand what’s at stake here and what role we all need to play in stewarding these products and programs. 

Agriscience Explained is brought to you by Corteva Agriscience and hosted by Tim Hammerich. This show is produced by Clint Pilcher, Rayda Krell and Ann Leonard. Jaime Hammerich and Grant Bolton edit these podcasts, and the music was composed by Dmitri Volkov. Subscribe for more Agriscience Explained: From Science to Solutions.

One scientist's vacation 30 years ago is a big reason why you don’t end up with caterpillars in your lettuce today. The class of chemistry derived from this remarkable bacteria is called Spinsoyns based on the scientific name for the bacteria, Saccaropolyspora spinosa. 

To tell this incredible story of a bacteria discovered in an unlikely location, we’re joined by Jesse Richardson, a field scientist at Corteva Agriscience based in Mesa, Arizona. Jesse has been with the company for about 39 years, where his job is to characterize new active ingredients and to provide technical education and technical service to growers and pest control advisors. 

Joining Jesse is Pest Control Advisor (PCA), Bill Fox. Bill has been a PCA since 1978, and is based in Yuma, Arizona serving farmers on both sides of the Arizona California border. He’s going to give us a field-level perspective on what impact spinosyns have had for farmers in his area. 

“  So it's a naturally derived product, but what was most exciting about it was it had the ecotox attributes of a biological, but the performance attributes of a synthetic…So when I saw its efficacy and this combination of safety on these natural enemies, I knew that we had something that was going to just blow the doors off the industry.” - Jesse Richardson

Jesse and his colleagues were convinced about the efficacy of this natural bacteria-derived insecticide. But as we’ve heard in other episodes, there’s still a process to taking the science and turning it into a solution. It was a commercial success for Corteva Agriscience because it was embraced almost immediately by growers and PCA’s like Bill Fox. 

“ It's just a fun time to be a PCA and to see what we accepted back when I was a kid, and now to see how effective these new products are on the same pests that I couldn't kill 20 years ago or so...Its been pretty fun.” - Bill Fox

A few takeaways from this episode: 
There is great opportunity that exists with biologicals. Not every product is going to work, but there’s some pretty incredible stuff out there when we combine discovery with modern tools to advance natural compounds and make them more effective solutions. 
Stewardship and longevity is a choice, or rather a series of choices to protect these tools, and it’s a shared responsibility.  
Spinosyns are a great example of needing efficacy. Nobody wants a worm in their lettuce and all want to make sure we are protecting non-target species. Spinosyns are incredible products for threading this needle. 

Agriscience Explained is brought to you by Corteva Agriscience and hosted by Tim Hammerich. This show is produced by Clint Pilcher, Rayda Krell and Ann Leonard. Jaime Hammerich and Grant Bolton edit these podcasts, and the music was composed by Dmitri Volkov. Subscribe for more Agriscience Explained: From Science to Solutions.