Problem diagnosis is an important tool that cooperative extension agents use in advising producers to select appropriate corrective management approaches. In the absence of such tools, producers are left to attempt diagnosis based only upon visual symptoms that often can be misleading, and to correct problems by selecting among numerous potential practices, products, and advertising claims. Our approach to strengthening crop problem diagnosis efforts is to request funding from each of several commodity groups to fund analysis of samples submitted by cooperative extension agents. This is not intended to cover all analytical needs, but for program support to allow agents to diagnose specific problems important to their region of the state.

1) This project will support efforts by cooperative extension agents to diagnose specific crop nutritional or disease problems in soybean.

2) This project will fund a limited number of samples to be submitted by cooperative extension agents for analysis at the NCDA&CS Agronomic Division plant tissue lab, and at the NCSU Plant Disease & Insect Clinic.