September weather and stripe rust

Farm and Ranch October 17, 2011 It is much too early to know the extent of stripe rust infection Pacific Northwest wheat growers will see next year.

Xianming Chen with the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service at Pullman, Washington says the late spring wheat harvest definitely generated stripe rust inoculum for infection this fall, however, September weather proved less friendly to the disease.

Chen: “This year the September weather was dry and much drier than normal and also drier than last year. Because of this dry weather, even though we have spores in the air produced from a later crop, this dry weather means less new formation on the plant therefore less infection.”

Chen says he will be out checking winter wheat fields this fall for stripe rust growth. But even if he finds the disease, Chen says that doesn’t necessarily mean a repeat of this past season.

Chen: “Because this rust also need to survive the winter. This winter weather will be a very determining factor.”

Stripe rust is less likely to survive a cold winter versus a warmer one.

From his 2011 winter wheat yield loss and fungicide study Chen concludes that stripe rust would have caused an average of more than 18 percent yield loss without the application of fungicides. For spring wheat the average yield loss without a fungicide application would have been more than 15 percent.

I’m Bob Hoff and that’s the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on Northwest Aginfo Net.

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