2 March 2005
Soybean Rust has been discovered on kudzu in Pasco County, Florida. The initial discovery was made on February 23th and confirmed early this week. Details are still forthcoming but active sporulation is occurring.

23 March 2005
Soybean Rust has been confirmed in Hernando County, Florida. Disease was observed earlier this month on old-foliage kudzu, then again on March 21 in the same area. Samples from the earlier observation were just recently confirmed as SBR. The most recent observation is on new growth. We will use the trajectory starting point in Pasco County to represent any existing disease in both Pasco and Hernando County, as they are adjacent to one another.

11 April 2005
Soybean Rust has been confirmed in Marion County, Florida. Disease was discovered on a small patch of kudzu in the northern part of the county late last week. There are now three counties in FL with confirmed soybean rust. We have shifted the forecast trajectory starting location to Brooksville (Hernando County) to better represent the geographic distribution of the known sources.

27 April 2005
Soybean Rust has been confirmed in Seminole County, Georgia. This newest discovery is on volunteer soybean plants near the town of Donalsonville. Soybean rust is also likely to be present on kudzu in this area. As this source is significantly removed from the FL confirmed sources, we will include trajectories and forecasts from both the Florida and Georgia locations. The link to the current forecast will now take the viewer to a Forecast Summary page. From there one can access the forecasts and trajectories from the individual sources (or source areas).

2 May 2005
Soybean Rust was confirmed late on Friday, April 29 in Dade County, Florida. Disease was discovered on Kudzu in this case. Few other details are available.

9 May 2005
Our thanks to Bob Kemerait who has updated the situation in Georgia. Included are the following items (paraphrased): After extensive scouting during the first week of May, no soybean rust has been found anywhere else in Georgia. The confirmed site in Seminole County is still of very low severity.

10 June 2005
No significant change to the epidemic status during the past month. Extensive, diligent scouting has occurred, but SBR has not been reported in any new counties. The volunteer soybeans at the original find in Seminole County, GA were destroyed in late May; however, SBR was found on volunteer soybeans at another site in the same county soon thereafter. We will not be removing Seminole County, GA from the forecasts. While disease activity remains at very low levels, this area still carries the potential to spread the epidemic. There has been suspicion of SBR in Terrell County, GA on volunteer soybeans in the past few weeks. Bob Kemerait, who has provided a wealth of valuable information from the field in southwest GA, has examined this area several times. His most recent information indicates that there is no soybean rust in Terrell County at this time. A weather note: The normal to dry weather in the Southeast during the early to mid Spring has been replaced by a period of wetter weather during the past two weeks. Trajectories from the known sources have moved over various areas of the Southeast during this time. This has occurred most frequently for FL, GA, and portions of AL and SC. Given the recent favorable conditions for disease development, and more on the way for this weekend, it would not be surprising to see some spread of the epidemic on available hosts during the middle or latter part of June. Earlier this week, scientists at USDA reported similar findings as revealed by their modeling efforts. We concur.

17 June 2005
Confirmed case of soybean rust in Jefferson County, Florida. Soybean rust was found on a small, 1/4-acre stand of kudzu in northern FL on June 14 and confirmed the next day. This is the fifth county in FL to report SBR in 2005. All FL reports have been on kudzu. With this outbreak being so tiny, and given the proximity of Jefferson County to the existing forecast source in Seminole County, GA, we will not issue an individual forecast for this site at this time.

1 July 2005
Within the past 2 to 3 days .... there have been reports of soybean rust in several areas. Leon County, FL has soybean rust on kudzu. Soybean rust has been confirmed on sentinel plots in Marion County, FL. On June 28, soybean rust was discovered on sentinel plots in Baldwin County, AL near the Gulf Coast Research and Extension Center at Fairhope. The site was confirmed late the next day. The Leon County, FL source will be grouped with the nearby sources in Jefferson County, FL and Seminole County, GA. The Baldwin County, AL source, though very small, will be brought into the forecast rotation. In addition, 25 rust spores were found in a Syngenta spore trap in Henry County, AL earlier this week. Henry County lies 40 to 50 miles to the northwest of Seminole County, GA. Soybean rust has NOT been confirmed at this location.

8 July 2005
Soybean Rust was confirmed late Wednesday, July 6 on kudzu in Gadsden County, FL. This is the county immediately west of Leon County, FL and just south of Seminole County, GA. These 4 counties will be considered as one source area for the purposes of the forecasts.

1 August 2005
It has been several weeks since our last epidemic update. During that time, soybean rust has been discovered in seven additional counties in the deep South. Most of these finds have been on sentinel plots and involve a few leaves and/or a few plants. The new discoveries have been in locations close to the known sources, with one exception. The counties include: George County, MS (first find in MS in 2005); Escambia County, FL; Tift County, Decatur County, Colquitt County, Effingham County, and Brooks County, GA. The outbreaks in Effingham County and Brooks County were reported late this past Friday afternoon, July 29. The Effingham County outbreak is the exception mentioned above. Effingham County is just northwest of Savannah, on the SC border, and is much farther to the north and east of the known sources than the other new finds. However, this is only mildly surprising. The weather in the region has been generally favorable for some time, and there have been a number of transport events that may have deposited viable rust spores in this area.

3 August 2005
Soybean Rust has been confirmed on leaves collected from a sentinel plot in Lee County, Alabama. This source will be added to the forecast rotation, as was the Effingham County, GA source 2 days ago. Both of these sources are quite weak, with very limited potential to affect other regions.

10 August 2005
A number of new outbreaks of soybean rust have been confirmed in the past week. Most of these are very near previously known sources. These include: Laurens County, GA (sentinel plot); Pearl River County, MS (sentinel plot); Elmore and Escambia Counties, AL (sentinel plots); Madison, Hamilton (kudzu), Alachua (kudzu), and Lee (kudzu) Counties, FL.

17 August 2005
New reports of soybean rust are coming in with some regularity, and additional outbreaks are occurring in counties that already have confirmed SBR. There is now an almost unbroken swath of counties with soybean rust that stretches along the Gulf coastal region from central FL to southeast MS. Central sections of GA and AL have more than one county with confirmed SBR. The new counties include: Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, and Holmes Counties, FL (setinel plots, western panhandle); Taylor (kudzu) and Columbia (sentinel plot) counties in northern FL; Hillsborough County (kudzu) in west-central FL; Hampton County in southern SC (first find in SC, commercial field); Putnam County in central GA (sentinel plot, northernmost find in the U.S. in 2005).

26 August 2005
Seven counties in AL have reported soybean rust since the last update, along with three in GA. In Alabama... Autauga County in central AL, Conecuh county in southwest AL, and 5 counties in southeast AL: Coffee, Henry, Houston, Dale, and Pike. In Georgia, we have Appling County (southeast), Grady County (southwest), and Oconee (central). Oconee County is now the farthest north that soybean rust has been reported in 2005. Discoveries have been made in sentinel plots or commercial fields in most of these areas, with one county's observation on kudzu (Conecuh, AL).

2 September 2005
There have been 5 new counties to report soybean rust during the past week. They are Calhoun, Walton, and Jackson County in the FL panhandle; Spalding County in central GA, and Tattnall County in southeast GA. The Tattnall County find was in a commercial field. The other discoveries were on sentinel plots.

11 September 2005
Going back to late Friday, September 2, six new counties have reported soybean rust: Barnwell and Calhoun in South Carolina (commercial soybeans), Washington (sentinel plot) and Marion (commercial field) in GA, Chilton in central AL (sentinel plot), and Washington in the Florida panhandle (commercial field). The find in Calhoun County, SC marks the northeastern-most extent of confirmed soybean rust in 2005.

28 October 2005
The number of U.S. counties reporting soybean rust in 2005 has now passed 100. There have been 43 new counties reporting soybean rust so far in October, which brings the year-to-date total 104. The large majority of these discoveries have fallen within the area of the Southeast already known to have rust. However, early October reports from Horry and Pickens counties in SC stretched the eastern and northern extent of 2005 epidemic. Ten new counties with soybean rust were reported in Alabama earlier this week. Today, word arrives of the first-ever find of soybean rust in North Carolina, plus nine new counties in SC. The NC counties include Brunswick, Columbus, and Sampson in the southeast part of the state along the SC border, and Beaufort and Craven counties in eastern NC near the sounds. The threat of rust has lessened since the growing season is at or near its end for most regions. As stated on the USDA site, there will probably be more soybean rust found in the coming days, in counties in or near the areas already reporting soybean rust.

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