This summer will mark the start of a three-year research project that could help stop the spread of diseases in soybeans.

Brandon University's Dr. Bryan Cassone says he's using a relatively new molecular technique to look for disease in soybeans. He says this method will help identify disease before visual symptoms appear.

"What we've been using in most cases currently to diagnose diseases is mostly visual symptom development," he says, "which is fine, it's not 100 per cent accurate, and you miss out on a lot of disease and you can't detect it before you see it."

But Cassone's research aims to do just that: identify and target disease before its affects are apparent.

A press release from BU explains that from each field, researchers will, "pluck a single leaf from every soybean plant, preserve it on ice or in a special preservative, and take it back to a BU lab to be fully sequenced," in order to detect any type of soybean disease within the plants.

Cassone says his research will provide accurate and early diagnosis.

"Prevention is always going to be the first and foremost line of defense," he says, "and so if we can identify diseases in fields — particularly before they're even showing symptoms — that can shape our spraying regimes, that can shape our pest management strategies and basically knowing this, by having this preventative research, we'll be able to hopefully stop diseases before they spread and become a huge issue."

Cassone says his method of identifying foliar disease could help with spraying strategies in terms of targeting problem areas early and efficiently.

Cassone says they're still in the works of planning the exact field locations for the project, but they're looking at 50 fields across Manitoba's soybean-growing region.