Cereal Diseases

Integrated Pest Management highlights the growth of a healthy crop with the least possible disruption to agro-ecosystems and encourages natural pest control mechanisms. IPM is one of the tools for low-pesticide-input pest management, and IPM must now be implemented by all professional agchem users.

Puccinia triticina is specific to wheat. Other pathotypes can affect barley, rye and triticale. 

Commonly known as Septoria or Septoria leaf blotch, this is the most damaging foliar disease in the UK for Winter Wheat. With a carefully constructed fungicide programme and use of Integrated Pest Management (IPM), disease pressure can be managed and losses greatly reduced.  

Diseases infect susceptible plant hosts, where environmental conditions favor disease development. Infected crops achieve lower yields and the quality of the produce can also be affected.

Yellow rust is an important economic disease of wheat. Often occurring more in the east of the UK and areas with mild winters and cool, damp summer weather. A good selection of resistant varieties and well-timed chemical applications can provide effective control of the disease and minimise losses.

Crop protection refers to practices and measures employed in agriculture to safeguard crops from both biotic (pests, diseases and weeds) and abiotic (environmental factors) stresses. They key goal of crop production is to maintain crop productivity, health and quality whilst minimising yield losses.

Ramularia (Ramularia collo-cygni) is a disease that affects only winter and spring barley. 

Triticale is a cross between wheat and rye. It has been shown to be a high yielding relatively low input crop that can do well in second cereal and less fertile conditions, but its adoption is hampered by lack of a reliable consistent market.

Crown rust (Puccinia coronata) is a fungus that is specific to oats. 

Leaf Spot (Pyrenophora avenae) is specific to oats. 

Net blotch of barley (causal pathogens: Pyrenophora teres f. sp. teres (Net form); P. teres f.sp. maculata (spot form). Net blotch affects a wide range of grasses, however, the forms on barley are specific to that crop and do not affect other crops. 

Rhynchosporium (Leaf Blotch or Scald) affects barley, rye and triticale. 

Fungicides are a type of agrochemical used specifically to kill fungal pathogens or inhibit the growth of fungi and the spores that they produce. They full under the umbrella of plant protection products (PPPs), also referred to as pesticides, along with other agrochemicals such as herbicides and insecticides that target weeds and insect pests respectively.  Prior to the development of fungicides, there are many historic cases of pathogenic fungi devastating crop yields - one of the most famous being the Irish Potato famine of 1845-52. This was caused by the potato late blight fungal pathogen Phytophthora infestans which today still causes massive losses to agriculture globally, although management by fungicides is now an important component of control.  A wide variety of fungicides exist with various modes of action (MOAs) to effectively control many fungal diseases including mildews, rusts, blights and leaf spots. A threat to modern agriculture is the development and spread of resistance to such fungicides amongst fungal populations.

Take-all is a root disease caused by the soil dwelling ascomycete fungus Gaeumannomyces graminis var. tritici. The fungus is capable of infecting cereal crops such a wheat, barley, triticale and rye however, oats are immune. Take-all can also affect several common grasses such as couch grass and bromes. Another variety of take-all fungus (graminis var. avenae) can infect oats and other cereals, but this is currently very rare in the UK.