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Reagan Hoskin considers herself a rule follower by nature
After graduating <a href="https://healthylife7.com/fssai-proposes-red-warning-labels-for-high/” title=”FSSAI proposes red warning labels for high”>high school in 2018, she spent the summer monitoring crops for her father, carrying out his instructions to a T: Zigzag along soybean fields. Scan the crops at vantage points. Note anything that looks out of place
Then one day, at the very edge of the family’s Pike County farm in western Illinois, she spotted a patch of yellow plants
“I’m like, ‘Aw man, the rest of the field had looked fine,’” Hoskin said. “Now I’m gonna have to actually walk down there and look at it.”
She previously learned how to identify soybean diseases and suspected this was sudden death syndrome, a severe but manageable ailment
But something looked off with the leaves
“I’m looking at this; there’s just a big patch of yellow on the leaf that’s crossing the big veins,” recalled Hoskin
Eight years later, little is still known about the fungus Hoskin found in what became the first confirmed appearance of “red crown rot” in the Midwest. What is known, experts say, is that the disease can reduce soybean yields by as much as 60% in severe cases
The commodity crop generates billions of dollars annually in revenue for Illinois, the top producer of soybeans in the U.S. As trade wars and tariffs make growing soybeans less profitable, diseases like red crown rot can cripple farmers’ livelihoods
Hoskin’s father, Ron, said it was not until 2024 when the fungus showed up in other parts of Illinois and other Midwest states that it began garnering significant attention
“Nobody has really cared about this disease because Pike County did not, you know, Pike County just didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things,” he said
Currently, Illinois, Missouri and Indiana have red crown rot in more than 10 counties, according to the Crop Protection Network map. Minnesota’s first case was observed in August 2025 and Wisconsin’s a few days later
After years of watching the fungus spread through his farm and kill off soybean plants, Ron Hoskin said he contacted an expert referred to him through a seed seller
That expert was Matt Montgomery, a scientist who calls agriculture his vocation. He got involved with red crown rot a few years earlier when a farmer reached out to his former employer with questions
Armed with a cowboy hat and notepad, Montgomery, who lives in Chatham, visits farmers and surveys fields infected with diseases. He said he met Hoskin and later conducted tests on his farm, which he called “patient zero.”
“This disease, in those areas where it has landed and really taken off, has hit beans in a way that most of us haven’t seen before,” Montgomery said
In July, Ron Hoskin told the Tribune he was pinning his hopes on a new seed treatment rolled out in the U.S. for this year’s planting season. If the treatment fails, he said, his family may switch to planting just corn
What is red crown rot?
The fungus causing red crown rot has infected soybeans and peanuts in parts of the South since the 1970s
One could assume it traveled north after decades. But according to genetic research published this month by the American Phytopathological Society, Illinois’ samples of red crown rot were “most likely not” due to the spread of fungi from the southeastern U.S
Experts don’t yet agree on how the disease travels. Some suspect it might be transferred by air, others by contaminated soil. But research is still in the early stages
Since 2018, the disease appears to have spread to soybean fields throughout the Midwest from Pike County, said Montgomery, agronomy education lead at Beck’s Hybrids. Indiana-based Beck’s is the largest family-owned retail seed company in the United States, according to its website
“We’ve not seen something in most soybean-producing regions that has quite the impact that this disease does,” Montgomery said. “We’ve had in some cases 70-bushel, 80-bushel soybean fields that have been reduced down into the teens for bushels by this disease. It’s a very rapid kill.”
Midwestern red crown rot was thought to be exclusive to west and central Illinois following its discovery, he said, but the fungus “really expanded its footprint since 2025.”
A changing climate may play a factor in the disease’s rise a University of Wisconsin at Madison professor whose research focuses on biology, epidemiology and field crop diseases. The fungus likes warm soil and moist air. As the Midwest gets warmer earlier in the year, Smith said conditions become more favorable for fungi like the one causing red crown rot
New weather patterns also mean some crop diseases are moving north. Smith gave the example of tar spot, a fungal illness traditionally found in Mexican and Latin American corn. Warming weather contributed to the disease’s rise in the Midwest over the past decade
Smith said parts of the region get less consistent rainfall than they used to. Instead of having an inch or so every week, he said, entire months are very wet or very dry
“The warming is one thing, but also, from a pathology perspective, the way the moisture comes is also very important,” he said. “So like getting these big dumps (of rain) influences pathogens along the way.”
Red crown rot symptoms typically show near the start of August, although Montgomery said many farmers observed the disease in mid-July this year, potentially due to heavy rains
The fungus is thought to linger in the soil year-round and attack the roots of growing soybean plants, Smith said. He compared this to removing the foundation of a house, which would cause the whole building to crumble. If plants do survive, significantly fewer soybeans can be harvested
Soybean plants infected with red crown rot can have yellow leaves and may start turning brown prematurely, he said. Looking even closer, he said, the bases of infected plants may be covered in red, “pimple-like” structures
Fields with the fungus remain infected even when there’s no crops. As the disease spreads across a farm, it often does so in patches
“You’ll have a bunch of dead plants surrounded by green plants that are still alive,” Smith said
An initial curiosity
As a seventh-generation farmer, Ron Hoskin, 62, grows corn and soybeans on a 1,600-acre plot. Because he “loved to go to school,” he also has a law degree. People like to joke that he’s not really an attorney, he said. He sees his law firm, which specializes in estate planning, probate and real estate, as a way to supplement his farming income
Ron Hoskin had hoped his daughter would become a crop scientist. Although she did not pursue agriculture research, she did follow in his footsteps. Now 26, Reagan Hoskin lives in Chicago and works remotely for her father’s law firm
She still frequently visits Pike County to help out her father and younger brothers on the farm. One day, she wants to move back
“We’ve been there for eight generations, and all eight generations have farmed there,” Reagan Hoskin said. “Those are some really deep roots.”
And she has confidence in her family’s ability to adapt
After Reagan Hoskin discovered the disease, she said identification took a while
Ron Hoskin said an expert from the Farm Service Agency, an arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that helps farmers with financing and disaster relief, had never seen it before. The case winded through numerous layers of government, and experts from the University of Illinois finally diagnosed the fungal disease
Ron Hoskin said the family initially approached the diagnosis from a place of mostly scientific interest
“We’ve dealt with numerous plant diseases over the years,” he said. “So we didn’t, you know, the effect of it did not set in in the first year by any means. It was more of a curiosity.”
In 2020, the next year Ron Hoskin planted soybeans in affected fields, he realized red crown rot was something more. Only 21 bushels of soybeans were harvested in a field where he needed 60 bushels to break even
“It was clear that we weren’t going to be able to afford to grow soybeans if we had red crown,” he said
The family began searching for ways to treat the disease
To start, the University of Illinois set up a test plot on the Hoskin’s farm to study the fungus. But Ron Hoskin said communication with researchers was poor, so little progress was made
It was not until the fungus spread to more Illinois counties and other states in 2024 that it garnered significant attention, Hoskin said
Smith observed the first confirmed Wisconsin case in September 2025. He said there was a 10-foot diameter circle of affected crops in the middle of a field without any indication as to where the fungus came from. It took until June to confirm the sighting and publish the findings
“One problem with not having a particular disease in your state is that you don’t get to work on that disease until it actually shows up,” Smith said. “That was one of the reasons why we went through the whole process to publish the first report, because that then allows us to be able to say, ‘All right, it’s established here; we’d like to work on this thing.’”
He logged Wisconsin’s second case on the Crop Protection Network map earlier this month. It was along the state’s border with Minnesota — several counties away from the initial sighting
‘Corn Belt level disease’
About five years ago, Montgomery was driving through the countryside surveying infected crops. That’s when he began to realize how dangerous the disease might be
“To just see the number of hillsides and fields that were turning in a way that I had never seen before, that was a really poignant moment for me,” he said
Someone in Pike County reached out to his previous employer with questions about red crown rot. Montgomery decided to visit the fields to see for himself
From that point on, the fungus took on an increasingly important role in his work
- Matt Montgomery, an agronomy education lead at Beck’s Hybrids, records data while standing in a soybean test field on Aug. 13, 2026, in Pike County, Illinois. The lighter colored soybean plants are infected with red crown rot. Montgomery is searching for a way to eradicate it. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
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Matt Montgomery, an agronomy education lead at Beck’s Hybrids, records data while standing in a soybean test field on Aug. 13, 2026, in Pike County, Illinois. The lighter colored soybean plants are infected with red crown rot. Montgomery is searching for a way to eradicate it. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
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Montgomery specializes in crop and soil management. He always hoped his agricultural work would leave the world better off than he found it, but he said red crown rot threatens that mission
Last year, Montgomery said, the fungus became a “Corn Belt level disease,” spreading from a pocket of Illinois to other farms in the Midwest region where corn and soybeans are the main crops
Still, he said he is optimistic that researchers will find effective treatments
“Five years ago, I had nothing to lay on the table but pure guesswork on how we might manage this thing,” he said. “To at least have plots and trials and some things that look like potential tools, even if they’re not completely perfect tools, is just light-years beyond where we’ve been.”
Montgomery said prevention moving forward is a “three-pronged approach.”
First are seed treatments. These are thin chemical coats applied to seeds before they’re planted to protect against insects and diseases, Montgomery said
Secondly, experts search for certain soybean varieties that are more resistant to diseases. Smith said no known varieties are fully resistant to red crown rot. One goal, he said, is to find partially resistant varieties that delay the onset of symptoms until after plants are harvested
And third, Montgomery said managing stressors on soybeans could be important for taming the disease. That might mean addressing soil fertility or not planting seeds too shallow
“That’s real preliminary,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that managing other stress in the field will eliminate red crown rot, but it means it might be part of an overall strategy that we want to employ.”
Researchers also want to know how the fungus spreads. Smith said red crown rot is thought to travel through contaminated soil, such as by riding on equipment. But Montgomery said infection patterns may point to its ability to be carried by wind
Holding out hope
Red crown rot has forced the Hoskin family to reevaluate a lot
After farming soybeans most of his life, Ron Hoskin said he would look “real serious” at only planting corn next year if red crown rot surfaced again. This would not be ideal, though, as alternating between corn and soybeans helps maintain soil health. Hoskin said if he goes all-in on corn, it will probably require strip tilling
Hoskin said he hadn’t tilled for soybeans since 1986, and his family tried the practice for the first time last year hoping it would help with red crown rot. It didn’t
Montgomery compared tilling to rolling over soil in a garden. Gardeners often mix up soil to get rid of weeds and ensure better contact with seeds. Farmers do a similar thing in their fields, but he said it’s also important to leave the ground alone when possible to preserve soil health
That’s where strip tilling comes in. Farmers till soil in narrow strips without disturbing the whole farm. However, Ron Hoskin said he receives subsidies from the federal government. To qualify, he follows certain conservation practices on the farm. One of them is to limit tilling
Even if he did without those subsidies, Ron Hoskin said strip tilling is expensive
“I mean, we’re looking at, if we have to do that, we’re looking at 300 grand just for the equipment,” he said
This year, Hoskin expressed some hope. He planted soybeans with Victrato, the first federally labeled seed treatment for red crown rot, according to Syngenta’s website. The Switzerland-based Syngenta Group bills itself as the world’s largest agricultural technology company by revenue
Montgomery said scientists may have developed Victrato to protect against sudden death syndrome and another soybean disease. Its promising results on red crown rot were a fortunate coincidence, he said
Researchers across the country log counties where the fungus is identified. Boris Camiletti, professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, reported many Illinois cases on the Crop Protection Network map
Camiletti said his group of scientists also trains AI models to detect infected fields using satellite imagery. Researchers take images of already identified fields and manually mark which areas have red crown rot. AI models then train on this data to identify affected areas
“If I get a call from a farmer that tells me, ‘Hey, I have confirmed red crown rot in my field. Can you check how severe it is?’ We can go just with a satellite, collect imagery, apply the model and get the map without visiting the field,” Camiletti said
‘Respect but don’t panic’
Pike County farmer Calvin Koeller said red crown rot spread to his neighbors’ fields two years ago. It showed up on his farm last year. This season, it became significantly worse
Some leaves drooped over, crumpled and dying. Others barely stood upright with bright yellow and brown splotches. When seen from above, Koeller’s farm looked to have yellow patches strewn throughout
Koeller said the fungus has significantly affected yields in fields where it’s present, meaning less money to pay off loans and offset increased costs for labor and fuel
While red crown rot can severely damage farmers’ profits, Montgomery cautioned against undue hysteria. He worries people will misdiagnose other diseases as red crown rot
“I want to make sure that we respect but don’t panic — get it identified correctly,” he said. “And then, when it comes, make sure you’re really tuned in, because if you are a grower and it does come into your part of the world, we are really going to want to think about management.”
For farmers such as Koeller, management means considering Victrato
“We’ll definitely use it next year with what we’ve seen, especially if our neighbors and this first year trial is coming back good,” he said
In early August, Ron Hoskin drove a tractor through a soybean field he passes every day. He said the farm had beautiful beans: the best in years. But that day the tops of a few plants appeared yellow
He found red crown rot in a few spots on the farm, leading him to conclude Victrato only delayed symptoms
Harvest is still weeks away
On Thursday, Ron Hoskin said red crown rot had manifested in only five fields. If conditions remain constant, he said he’ll plant soybeans again next year
“Even though we’ve got it in a few fields, I think we’ve got some hope that we can continue to grow beans,” he said. “Every day that goes by, it gets us closer to the finish line without a disaster.”
