EPA clears emergency help for Louisiana rice farmers - KNOE 8 News; KNOE-TV; KNOE.com |

EPA clears emergency help for Louisiana rice farmers

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WASHINGTON, D.C., (KNOE 8 News) - The Environmental Protection Agency has given emergency relief to Louisiana rice growers.

According to a release earlier today, Louisiana rice growers who have discovered resistant sheath blight in their production fields will have emergency access to Sercadis™ fungicide to fight this burgeoning threat to yields and crop quality.

Louisiana farmers got this emergency access because there are currently no other alternatives for effective control and there is apparently the strong possibility of significant damage without it. 

Resistant sheath blight has created these conditions in southern Louisiana. Louisiana State University's AgCenter refers to the current outbreak of sheath blight as "the most economically significant in Louisiana rice production since the early 1970s."2 Sheath blight typically infects the culms at the water line between the late tillering and joint elongation growth stages, and can progress rapidly, causing tiller lodging and collapse.

Sheath blight can spread from tiller to tiller within a rice field. Farmers commonly rotate rice with soybeans, which can also carry the disease, known in soybeans as aerial web blight.

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