Over the course of the last decade, one disease has really left its mark on Kansas wheat.
A Kansas State University Disease Specialist says that stripe rust has become one of the state’s most damaging wheat diseases.
According to Erick DeWolf, “Wheat stripe rust is a fungal disease of wheat and it takes its name from the bright yellow or orange streaks or stripes that it forms on the leaves as it begins to invade and cause the disease or damage to those leaves of the wheat. So, the fungus will actually penetrate inside the leaves and then establish a very delicate feeding relationship with the plant itself. So, it’s actually not outright destroying the cells, but it actually just— initially is establishing a very delicate feeding process. It’s almost parasitizing the cells of the plant.”
However, growers who find stripe rust in their fields do have several options.
“Stripe rust is a disease that we can manage in two different ways. The primary means that we’d like to see people use to try and manage this disease is genetic resistance. The varieties that we grow, the varieties that individual growers select have varying degrees of their genetic susceptibility or genetic resistance to this particular fungus,” DeWolf explains. “Remember, this fungus... has that very delicate feeding interaction with the plant, and that means that we can often alter that feeding relationship through genetic resistance. But, genetic resistance is the primary tool that we’d like to see growers use. So, variety selection is very important. The second mechanism would be follicular fungicides.”
