Green Stem Syndrome
Symptoms:
- Green stem syndrome refers to individual, scattered plants in a field that maintain green stems and sometimes leaves well past the time when they are normally brown and mature.
- Incidence of green stem varies from location to location in a given year and can vary from year to year.
Time of Occurrence:
- Typical symptoms are seen as the crop is maturing.
Causal Agents and Conditions Favoring Disease:
- The cause of green stem syndrome is unknown.
- This syndrome has been attributed to many different causes.
- These include plant viruses, low soil moisture, potassium deficiency, soybean population density, genetic mutations in soybean plants, and insect damage.
- Plant viruses seem to be most commonly associated with green stem.
- Bean pod mottle virus is strongly associated with green stem, and soybean mosaic virus has also been linked to this disorder.
- However, specific viruses are not always detected in plants with green stem, and plants with specific viruses sometimes don't have green stem.
Disease Management:
- Due to the complex, uncertain causes of this syndrome, specific and proven control strategies are not known.
- Varietal selection may be of value because incidence of green stem has been reported to vary among varieties.