So who’s winning the war against fusarium – plant breeders and disease specialists or the wily plant genes that produce the devastating disease?
Mike Grenier, agrologist for the Canadian Wheat Board, said it’s too close to call.
“It’s a disease that’s tough to make progress against,” he said last week.
The best way for a farmer to stay on top of fusarium head blight is to use a three-part package, including variety selection, crop rotation and in-season fungicide treatment for suppression and then hope for favourable weather.
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“Mother Nature bats last,” said Grenier. “Picking the right variety is the first line of defence,” he said after speaking to 120 farmers attending CWB Day at Crop Production Week in Saskatoon.
Rotation and fungicide are both helpful but neither will solve the problem by itself.
Grenier said it has been a slow process bringing new, FHB-tolerant varieties into production.
” The disease package in the plant is controlled by a number of genes, so it’s not an easy target for breeders,” he said.
“It takes multiple genes to provide resistance and that’s a much slower process.”
By contrast, leaf rust can be controlled through a single gene to gain tolerance. Bringing forward three to five genes is much more difficult.
He said breeders have recently enjoyed success identifying sources of FHB resistance and they are now trying to introduce those sources into new varieties.
” The challenge when screening a whole bunch of material is picking out particular lines that demonstrate resistance.”
It’s necessary to engage in field tests and it has been difficult gaining access to research plots and greenhouse space.
When it comes to FHB resistance, durum is the most susceptible crop, followed by Canada prairie spring, hard red spring, barley and oats, the least susceptible.
