Stripe Rust Losses

We had a very mild winter and that can translate into a lot more stripe rust in wheat fields which ultimately creates losses in yield. Extension plant pathologist Tim Murray.

MURRAY: We're following on the reports that other people are coming up with, mainly Mike Flowers , who's the variety testing coordinator for Oregon State University and then Xianming Chen, who's USDA-ARS plant pathologist here at WSU and we remain concerned about stripe rust every year because it's our main foliar plant disease.

He says it's important to be on the lookout at this time for signs of stripe rust.

MURRAY: When things turned off very mild in January we became, I don't want to say concerned, but we certainly thought we've got to be more diligent in monitoring the situation and seeing what's going on because the more mild the conditions earlier in the year, January, February, March - the more favorable it is for the development of stripe rust.

Murray says that the worst fears may be realized.

MURRAY: What we have seen is that true-to-form even though there was not a lot of rust out there last fall what was there survived the winter and it's starting to develop and we got the first report from Mike Flowers in the Willamette Valley, a couple weeks later he had a report from the Hermiston area in a field of irrigated winter wheat and then about a week or so later Dr. Chen came out with his second update and reported finding stripe rust in winter wheat in Washington in the Walla Walla area.

And that's Washington Ag Today. I'm Greg Martin, thanks for listening on the Ag Information Network of the West.