Cereal farmers looking to stretch their input dollars shouldn’t cut corners on strategies to combat leaf diseases, say researchers.
Producers who try that will likely end up cutting yields and returns, said Penny Pearse, a plant disease specialist with Saskatchewan Agriculture.
“If it doesn’t pencil out on paper, don’t expect a miracle in the field.”
Pearse is part of the Cereal Leaf Disease Directorate, an interprovincial group of researchers who, with help from Novartis, are trying to spread the news about cereal leaf diseases.
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“I think most wheat growers aren’t even aware of the fact that we have leaf disease,” said Myron Kopec, a manager with Novartis.
Kopec’s company makes one of four fungicides on the market for controlling the diseases.
He acknowledged fungicides can be a costly input, but said the added yield and higher quality more than make up for the extra cost.
Cereal leaf diseases include rust, tan spot, spot blotch, net blotch, scald, septoria and powdery mildew.
Every summer, some of these diseases damage crops on the Prairies, said Andy Tekhauz of Agriculture Canada’s cereal research centre.
“We’re really dealing with a group of diseases that, year in, year out, are affecting crops and producers’ returns.”
Tekhauz said the severity of the diseases depend on the weather and are hard to predict.
“They each have a special little niche for themselves if they’re to develop well and predominate,” he said.
“They’re not rare. They don’t occur once in a while. They’re all over the place.”
Ieuan Evans, plant disease specialist with Alberta Agriculture, said farmers have to watch and plan for diseases if they want top yields and plump kernels.
“These days, farmers aren’t lucky anymore. They have to plan to be lucky.”
Last year, he said, south central Alberta farmers hit by cereal leaf diseases were unprepared.
“They’d never seen them before and they got hammered.”
Seed treatments and fungicides can help increase plumpness and feed value, he said.
Pearse said clean seed will help because septoria, spot and net blotch are seedborne diseases.
She said farmers should leave at least one year between cereals in fields so residue that harbors the diseases can decompose.
Farmers should also avoid applying too much nitrogen, which creates a lush canopy perfect for encouraging the diseases.
Routine scouting is key, she said.
In general, if 25 percent of the flag and second to flag leaves are infected before heading, yield losses will be high enough to warrant the use of fungicide, she said.
Fungicides must be applied at the flag leaf stage.
Manitoba Agriculture is expanding the disease forecast system it pioneered for potatoes and canola to include wheat, said pathologist Gary Platford.
Analysts using weather data collected from small, automated stations around the province are able to forecast when conditions are ripe for leaf diseases and fusarium head blight.
Platford said the information is updated every three days on the department’s website at http://gov.mb.ca/agriculture/news/ace.
