11-16 IAN Vomit Wheat

 You are eating your morning cereal and all of a sudden you throw up.

A New Wheat Variety Resists Emerging Fungal Disease Threat in Southern Idaho. University of Idaho researchers hope a new soft white spring wheat cultivar called UI Stone will prove solid in its resistance to the fungal disease Fusarium head blight, an emerging threat to southern Idaho wheat and barley crops.

Fusarium head blight, also known as scab, can devastate wheat crops. A toxin produced by the fungus can make the grain unmarketable. Outbreaks in southern Idaho 30 years ago cost growers half their crops. Signs in 2009 and 2011 show that scab may again become an emerging threat, said Juliet Marshall, an Idaho Falls-based cereals pathologist.  “Fusarium head blight is a particularly nasty disease that causes a reduction in yield but also as a result of the inspection process, it has some toxins associated with the infection process and those toxins are called vomitoxin because they cause humans and monogastric animals to vomit so it is important to have varieties that will not he as susceptible to that particular disease. One of the concerns is that we  release new varieties that have lower levels of susceptibility.”