Scout for stripe rust in spring wheat

Washington Ag Today June 29, 2009 The latest stripe rust alert from Xianming Chen with the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service in Pullman states that no stripe rust has been observed or reported in commercial wheat fields in eastern Washington, except for the Horse Heave Hills area and in northern Idaho.

Chen says the stripe rust season is pretty much over for winter wheat but he says the spring wheat crop still has time for stripe rust to cause damage and he recommends that growers start scouting their fields for the disease, especially if susceptible cultivars are grown. Chen says recent precipitation and cool weather conditions saw relatively quick development of stripe rust in spring wheat nurseries.

Stripe rust is the main rust threat to northwest wheat but occasionally, given the proper conditions, stem rust can also be a problem. Stem rust needs the barberry bush along with wheat to survive and despite a barberry eradication program some years ago, Doctor Tim Murray of Washington State University says there are still some around in the Palouse area.

Murray: “And when we visited some of those sites where we know barberries are present, we have found a little bit of stem rust starting to develop in the wheat.”

Murray says it takes cool, wet springs that delay development of wheat, like this year, for stem rust to be a problem, but it’s generally localized.

Murray: “We don’t expect stem rust to be more of a problem. We have never had a breeding program in the Pacific Northwest for stem rust because it is just not a problem. We do get localized pockets of stem rust in some years when the weather conditions are favorable for the disease, but on a large scale we don‘t expect to ever see it again as a major concern.”

I’m Bob Hoff and that’s Washington Ag Today on the Northwest Ag Information Network.

?