Lincoln, Nebraska, USA
February 3, 2012

When wheat diseases appear in your fields, correctly identifying the type of disease can help you provide the most effective management. Three new resources on disease identification and management in wheat and barley have been added to the CropWatch Wheat section under Disease Management. Each includes numerous photos to aid in identification and to differentiate between diseases. All were developed by a multi-state, university extension and research committee on small grain diseases.

Wheat Disease Identification, a 24-page guide, is organized according to area of damage — head and grain, leaves, or stem and roots — and then by disease. This guide includes photos and brief information on the following diseases, divided by site of damage:

• Heads and grain: Common bunt, fusarium head blight, loose smut, sooty head molds, and Stagonospora nodorum blotch
• Leaves: Bacterial streak, barley yellow dwarf, leaf rust, powdery mildew, Septoria tritici blotch, Stagonospora nodorum blotch, stem rust, stripe rust, tan spot, wheat soilborne mosaic, wheat spindle streak mosaic, and wheat streak mosaic
• Stem and roots: Cephalosporium stripe, common root rot, Fusarium root, crown, and foot rots, and take-all

Identifying Rust Diseases of Wheat and Barley, a four-page guide, includes descriptions and photos of stem, stripe, and leaf rust and a discussion of emerging races of stem rust.

Identification and Management of Stem Rust on Wheat and Barley, an 8-page guide, addresses:

• How stem rust is identified
• Factors influencing the risk of stem rust and potential outbreaks
• Assessing the degree of damage and charts of yield loss at different growth stages
• Recommendations on timing and other factors of fungicide application
• Efficacy of foliar fungicides used to manage the disease

Stephen Wegulo
Extension Plant Pathologist for Small Grains

Website: http://www.unl.edu

Published: February 6, 2012