Old Valmeyer was a small town like any other. It had a bustling school, gracious neighbors and beloved businesses. In 1993, the Illinois town faced a devastating flood from the Mississippi River. The extensive damage caused by a 16-foot wall of water forced the town to higher ground.

Although many consider the site a ghost town, it remains home to a soybean field owned by John Reichman. To the untrained eye, this field appears to be like any other. But it’s actually home to decades of groundbreaking soybean disease research.

The SDS emergence

Farming is a tradition in the Reichman family. John’s great-grandfather settled in the Mississippi bottoms and started farming. That legacy was carried on by John’s grandfather, his dad, himself and now his son. Today, the Reichman family raises corn, soybeans and wheat.

“Farming’s in our blood,” Reichman said. “I grew up helping Dad and enjoyed being out in the fields. It’s a nice scenic area where we farm, out in the open.”

The flood did not leave the Reichman farm untouched, as it dumped heavy deposits of silt and sand onto the productive field. With no way to remove it, the soil types had to be incorporated into his land. Unbeknownst to John, the soil would become a determining factor in the prevalence of Sudden Death Syndrome (SDS) in his soybeans.

After planting the first round of Roundup Ready soybean germplasm in the mid-1990s, John’s crops were heavily affected by SDS, a fungal disease that can lead to significant yield loss. The disease presents symptoms such as yellowing and browning of leaves that tend to develop in late July or early August.

The new seed variety was unexpectedly susceptible to the disease. That susceptibility, combined with the favorable SDS conditions on the Reichman farm, created a perfect storm.

Forming research roots

John sought help from the late Oval Myers, a retired plant breeder at Southern Illinois University (SIU) Carbondale. John knew Myers had Illinois Soybean Association funding to develop management options for SDS. According to John, Myers came to the farm soon after and left enthusiastic about the favorable conditions the field offered for SDS research. Soon after, John partnered with Myers, and the university’s research on plant breeding and disease resistance began.

Although John has farmed for much of his life, research is his second language. In 1971, he graduated with a degree in zoology from SIU and later received a master’s in research from the University of Missouri.

“I always liked research,” John said. “It has always been in the back of my mind as something I wanted to take part in.”

Upon Myers’ retirement, Myers’ trainee and fellow plant breeder Mike Schmidt took over the research on the farm before passing the torch to SIU plant pathology professor Jason Bond in the early 2000s.

“He (John) got burned real bad by SDS in a lot of his fields,” said Bond. “That was the impetus for him allowing people to come and do research on his farms, because he needed solutions, too.”

Back then, fields conducive to consistent SDS development were hard to come by. The Reichman farm held favorable conditions for testing the disease: consistent moisture from the Mississippi River, the use of center pivot irrigation and accessibility for early planting.

A major concern of the research team was negatively impacting other land near the research site. John kept in close communication with the team to avoid overlapping applications, maintaining appropriate proportions on the research field and aligning on schedules.

“A lot of those early days were like training wheels,” Bond said. “We were figuring out how to set up experiments to get consistent SDS, when water is most important and the best planting dates to nurture the disease.”

Research contributions and industry impact

It didn’t take long for the research to make waves in the industry. In the first years of testing, researchers identified seed varieties that were highly susceptible to SDS. It had an immediate impact on soybean breeders who used the data to refine their portfolios and build better offerings.

Another key area of research involved studying how pathogen inoculation contributes to the introduction of SDS into a field. Although inoculation is a clear way of introducing SDS into a field, its propagation depends more on hot, damp field conditions than it does the basic introduction of the disease itself given the importance of those field conditions as a vector for the disease.

While conducting research at the Reichman field, the SIU team built a rating scale to determine the severity and incidence of SDS in a field, which in turn helped plant breeders compare the susceptibility and resistance of various seed varieties and treatments.

It starts by calculating the percentage of plants showing symptoms and determining the severity of an infection based on those host-plant conditions. After that information is collected, it’s cross-referenced with SDS disease data to create an index that indicates the potential plant damage based on different infection levels. In the case of SDS, this rating scale is used today to inform plant breeders of SDS susceptibility of each soybean variety.

The Reichman family’s contribution also led to the training of many students in SDS research. Bond said many of those students continued to pursue careers in the agriculture industry and SDS research.

“The most important aspect of the research on Reichman’s land is to ensure companies and farmers have the tools they need,” Bond said. “That’s probably the overriding success of that location.”

Partnership and collaboration

At the core of every piece of research such as what Bond and the Reichman family have conducted is a shared mission to help farmers. Bond said good research partners embody tolerance of research objectives, even if they contradict industry trends.

Over the decades, Bond said, John’s consistency and reliability made their research partnership easy and impactful. There’s always a chance that SDS breeding research could negatively impact the farmer’s other crops, but constant communication and transparency helped prevent those issues.

“He’s always been generous with his time,” Bond said. “That’s the mark of a great relationship. We know they have some constraints, and they know we have some constraints, and we just work together. We’re not doing this just for his benefit or our benefit. We’re doing this for the greater benefit.”

Looking ahead

Current SDS research focuses on identifying resistant seed types and testing traditional fungicide and biocontrol agents as disease control mechanisms. As John’s son takes on a bigger role in the family farm, Bond said he is hopeful that the research partnership will continue.

As the years go on, the core of the Reichman operation – family and research – hasn’t changed. John says he is looking forward to watching his grandkids play a more active role on the farm.

Through quiet diligence and persistence, John has helped turn a year of crop loss into a decades-long research partnership, one that continues to help farmers across the country.

“It’s been a good run,” John said. “They’ve always been good to me, and I hope I helped them out with their research a little bit.”