John Hart Lindsey Thiessen speaks at a soybean field day at the Piedmont Research Station in Salisbury, N.C. in 2018. NC soybean farmers need to turn to alternative options for diseases and use other fungicides beyond group 11. An integrated pest management approach is key for managing field crop diseases, which requires scouting, host resistance, crop rotation and using the right fungicides in a timely manner to succeed. Speaking at the virtual North Carolina Crop Protection School, Lindsey Thiessen, North Carolina State University Extension plant pathologist, said both a whole-farm perspective and long-term management is critical. Job one in disease management is scouting. Thiessen said successful scouting requires you to get out of the truck and “getting up close and personal” in looking for pathogens. She emphasized that diseases are not evenly distributed or simply found on the edge of the field.