Corn is one of the most valuable cash crops globally, with annual grain production in the United States alone valued at nearly $80 billion. Fungicides are widely used to protect crops and promote yield, but new research published in Phytobiomes Journal suggests we may be overlooking a hidden cost: the loss of beneficial fungi essential to plant health.
A research team led by Briana Whitaker, a research microbiologist, and Joseph Opoku, a research plant pathologist, with the USDA Agricultural Research Service, in collaboration with Nathan Kleczewski (Syngenta Biologicals), investigated how foliar fungicides influence the foliar fungal endophyte community—the fungi that live within corn leaf tissue without causing disease.
The study, conducted at two agricultural research sites in the midwestern United States, used culture-based techniques to identify and quantify the fungi living within corn leaves. Researchers applied a systemic, multi-mode-of-action fungicide to assess its impact. The results? While the overall presence of culturable fungi didn’t change significantly, the composition of the fungal community did—especially in terms of diversity and abundance of specific fungal species. Interestingly, these effects varied by location, emphasizing the influence of environmental conditions on microbiome responses.
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