Seed treatments have been recently developed for use as nematode control in soybean production; however, little information was available for North Carolina producers. Given the different environments that soybean is produced in within the state, the level of control seed treatments may differ between regions and nematode populations. To address this, seed treatments were assessed in Johnston and Hyde counties. Seed treatments did not improve yields at either site, nor were nematode populations or damages reduced by the seed treatments. This study will be repeated in 2018 on several other sites, and will include in-furrow/drench applications that may improve the efficacy of chemicals applied.

This work has described the minimal efficacy of seed treatments on aggressive nematodes and fields with high populations of nematodes, which saves producers on costly seed treatment applications that provide no economic benefit to manage nematodes. Further, field trials will continue to assess the cost of seed treatments and the benefit they provide with different nematode populations, including soybean cyst nematode and root knot nematodes.