Soybean Bacterial Blight

Bacterial blight is an important bacterial disease of soybean. This disease is seed transmitted and is most prevalent during cool, wet growing conditions.

Symptoms
Bacterial blight symptoms include water lesions that are found on leaves and other plant parts including pods. These lesions develop a brown or yellowish color on leaves. Pods develop water lesions that later change color to brown. Seed are infected and become discolored, shriveled, and may develop lesions.

Control
Effective control measures include:

• disease-free seed
• proper crop rotation
  

Testing
The Seed Department conducts a soybean bacterial blight test using 5,000 seed. Sample extracts are isolated and tested for the presence of blight by using a plating technique. This test is typically completed in four to five days and results are reported as positive or negative.