ABSTRACT
Summary Diseases cause major losses in yield, quality, and stand life of forage crops. Strategies that are used to minimize such losses include the use of resistant varieties and crop-management practices that directly or indirectly affect diseases. Because of the perennial nature of both the crops and the diseases, there are many opportunities to implement management strategies to reduce disease. Implementation begins prior to the planting of the forage crop and continues through the actual planting and on through the production years. Insect control, weed control, and fertility maintenance are examples of crop management that also serve to minimize forage-crop losses to disease. Certain crop-management strategies, such as varietal selection, seedbed preparation, and seeding rate, are one-time opportunities, and if they are not applied at the appropriate time, disease losses may occur. Other management practices, such as fertilization and insect control, are recurrent. Failure to maintain sound management practices, even for a short period, may result in severe losses, because managing forage-crop diseases is basically therapeutic, not eradicative. Many diseases are chronic in forage crops, taking a small toll over several years. It is the rate of disease development that management affects. The future will bring an intensification of existing disease-management strategies because of increasing economic and environmental limitations. Our present system of managing forage-crop diseases is effective and economical and causes minimal disturbance to the environment, but it can be improved. Research into pathogen biology and disease development must be done before models for forage-crop diseases can be developed and integrated into master models of crop production.
