Scientific communication is facilitated by a data-driven, scientifically sound taxonomy that considers the end-user's needs and established successful practice. In 2013, the Fusarium community voiced near unanimous support for a concept of Fusarium that represented a clade comprising all agriculturally and clinically important Fusarium species, including the F. solani species complex (FSSC). Subsequently, this concept was challenged in 2015 by one research group who proposed dividing the genus Fusarium into seven genera, including the FSSC described as members of the genus Neocosmospora, with subsequent justification in 2018 based on claims that the 2013 concept of Fusarium is polyphyletic. Here, we test this claim and provide a phylogeny based on exonic nucleotide sequences of 19 orthologous protein-coding genes that strongly support the monophyly of Fusarium including the FSSC. We reassert the practical and scientific argument in support of a genus Fusarium that includes the FSSC and several other basal lineages, consistent with the longstanding use of this name among plant pathologists, medical mycologists, quarantine officials, regulatory agencies, students, and researchers with a stake in its taxonomy. In recognition of this monophyly, 40 species described as genus Neocosmospora were recombined in genus Fusarium, and nine others were renamed Fusarium. Here the global Fusarium community voices strong support for the inclusion of the FSSC in Fusarium, as it remains the best scientific, nomenclatural, and practical taxonomic option available.

Alfalfa is reportedly in good condition throughout the state with little winter injury and surprisingly few reports of leaf disease problems. But frequent April rains provided good conditions for leaf disease development, and significant levels of spring black stem and leaf spot were reported last week by extension field specialist Brian Lang in northeastern Iowa. The ISU Plant Disease Clinic also has received several samples with either spring black stem, common leaf spot, bacterial leaf spot, or stem blight.

This is another unusual growing season, with a cool and wet spring followed by the hot and rainy summer. The cool weather that continued into the first week of July suddenly changed when a heat wave accompanied with rainy days arrived. The hot and wet final two weeks of July remind me of the subtropical weather in the Gulf Coast of Louisiana where I did my graduate study and where foliar diseases are a major issue in crop protection each year.

In early summer, soybean seedling diseases are diminishing and foliar and root diseases are starting to show up. This article discusses some soybean diseases (excluding viral diseases) you may see during scouting in July.