Stripe rust update

Farm and Ranch May 25, 2009 Growers in eastern Washington and North Central Oregon with wheat varieties susceptible to stripe rust should start checking their fields for signs of the disease. That’s the advice of Xianming Chen with the Agricultural Research Service at Washington State University.

Chen checked fields late last week and found no rust in commercial wheat fields, however the disease was in nurseries in the Central Ferry and Walla Walla areas of Washington as well as nurseries at the Pendleton Station and Hermiston Station in Oregon. Chris Mundt of Oregon State University reported stripe rust in an irrigated wheat field near Ione, Oregon, which was sprayed with a fungicide.

The ARS’s Chen says stripe rust was generally under control in the Horse Heaven Hills due to application of fungicides but growers should check for new development of the disease.

There are some new fungicides out this year. Jerry Munare of BASF says his company’s new cereal fungicide TwinLine is powered by HeadLine but also has metconazole as an active ingredient.

Munare: “So it is a very strong product for preventing and curing wheat diseases, like stripe rust disease and all other rust diseases too.”

Randy Myers of Bayer CropScience says its new product Prosaro has two active ingredients too.

Myers: “It’s the broadest spectrum that growers, no matter where they are, will be able to have access to. It controls head diseases, head diseases, all the important problems growers have, as far as foliar diseases, Prosaro can be the answer.”

I’m Bob Hoff and that’s the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.