By Paul D. Esker and Alyssa Collins
Since tar spot of corn was first found in Pennsylvania in late 2020, most initial reports of the disease have been received in mid-to-late July. Given this, we recommend scouting corn fields for this disease early to mid-July.
To facilitate reporting tar spot finds in Pennsylvania, we created a simple app using Epicollect5, available on Android and iOS platforms. This scouting tool has advantages over our current reporting system, which primarily relies on text messages or emails. One main advantage is that you can use the app while scouting without a signal, meaning that if you are offline, the report will upload once you have connectivity.
Below, we outline the steps you must follow to submit a report. We developed this to be systematic using a series of simple questions or information that is requested. We want to emphasize that while we ask for GPS coordinates, these are only used to identify the county where an observation was submitted.