May 27: Wheat is in the milk to soft dough stages of filling with later heads still pollinating in Clay/Nuckolls county fields.  Stripe rust greatly increased in severity, particularly on susceptible varieties. This photo is showing progression on Overland.  I haven’t seen stripe rust yet in fields planted to Wolf.  Barley yellow dwarf is appearing in small amounts in more fields, but is limited to field corners/borders thus far.

May 23: (Photo: barley yellow dwarf in wheat-characterized by yellow-purple flag leaves.  It is vectored by aphids). Wheat is in the late flowering to beginning milk stage in many Clay/Nuckolls county fields.  Stripe rust increased in severity this past week in more susceptible varieties and barley yellow dwarf is also appearing more often in patchy areas of fields.

May 15: Rain is falling this morning in parts of our area and wheat is in a variety of heading and flowering stages.  While the risk management tool at:  http://www.wheatscab.psu.edu/ still says “low risk” I’ve been concerned it had the potential to be higher with our growth stage and weather conditions.  Last week I received numerous wheat fungicide questions.  Caramba and Prosaro are the two products you can apply legally once your wheat is flowering.  Twinline is off-label once flowering begins.  Yes, it has metconazole in it (also active ingredient in Caramba) in addition to a strobilurin, but it only legally can be applied to Feekes 10.5 which is full heading and is off-label once flowering occurs.  Caramba and Prosaro will help prevent scab in addition to kill the rust already occurring in your plants.  Unfortunately, I was also starting to see barley yellow dwarf appearing in Nuckolls County fields.  This virus is vectored by a number of aphid species.  We’d been seeing aphids and stripe rust for a month at this point but both remained below threshold levels/low incidence.  Barley yellow dwarf can be identified by the flag leaf turning a bright yellow-purple color.  With 80% of wheat yield coming from the flag leaf and there being nothing you can do about barley yellow dwarf, this also needs to be part of your decision making process if you were planning on applying a fungicide for preventing scab/controlling stripe rust.

May 9: We’ve been seeing stripe rust in wheat for over a month now, but the amount of rust has remained low.  Some have chosen to spray wheat at this point; however I’m also concerned about the potential for Fusarium Head Blight (scab) in wheat.  Fusarium head blight is caused primarily by Fusarium graminearum, the same fungus causing Fusarium stalk, root, and ear rot in corn.  The fungus survives the winter in corn and other small grain residue and then releases spores in the spring.  However, wheat planted into soybean ground can still be affected by scab because the fungal spores can be wind-blown in addition to being water-splashed to wheat that is in the flowering stage.

May 1: Wheat progressed quickly in one week!  Wheat in Clay and Nuckolls counties have flag leaves emerged even though wheat is really short.  The color is getting better thanks to moisture, root establishment, and nitrogen uptake.  I also didn’t see an increase in rust incidence this past week and aphid numbers were holding steady.  For those asking about fungicides, I’m still hoping we can hold off a little longer with current wheat economics, especially since in those counties rust wasn’t increasing due to the colder temps.  With warmer temperatures this coming week, please be checking your wheat.  If possible, one option that could be more economical in non-irrigated situations would be to consider treating your wheat once during flowering with either Caramba or Prosaro (as these products both prevent scab at the proper application timing and also kill fungal diseases including rust already present on the leaves).  We’ll have to see what happens with rust development and with how long it takes for heads to emerge.  There’s also been consistency with some varieties rated high for rust resistance where I have yet to find rust in them-so that’s a good thing!