Evidence of fusarium head blight is rarely found while walking through an oat field.
But research at Agriculture Canada’s cereal research centre in Winnipeg shows the disease is widespread in oats.
“We find fusarium head blight in most Manitoba oat fields,” said plant pathologist Andy Tekauz.
His three-year study found fusarium head blight was present in 75 percent of the oat fields surveyed.
The study isolated fusarium fungus in 10 to 15 percent of the seed taken from those fields.
Producers have assumed oats isn’t susceptible to fusarium because the disease isn’t obvious in oats the way it is in wheat.
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“You can walk in an oat field for hours and not be aware that it’s there,” Tekauz said.
As well, yield loss isn’t as severe in oats as it is in wheat, and kernels suffer less visible damage.
Tekauz’s study, funded in part by farmers through the Western Grains Research Foundation, had two goals: determine the prevalence of fusarium in oat fields and identify and incorporate genetic sources of resistance.
Four species of fusarium infect oats, including F. graminearum, which is the dominant species in wheat.
Researchers hope that any graminearum-resistant varieties they develop will also be resistant to the other species of fusarium.
During the study, researchers identified genetic resistance to fusarium among Canadian and foreign varieties and breeding lines and that resistance is now being used in oat breeding programs in Western Canada.
Tekauz added that oat varieties tend to be more resistant to fusarium than wheat or barley. Researchers are working on a rating system for fusarium resistance in future oat varieties.
The high incidence of fusar-ium in oats doesn’t prevent them from being milled for food or exported but becomes a marketing problem when levels of the harmful mycotoxin deoxynivalenol (DON) become too high.
When oats are milled for human food, they are stripped of the hull and subjected to heat or steam. Half the DON is in the hull, so dehulling takes care of that, while steaming removes the rest because DON is water soluble.
“At the end of the day it’s not a big issue for human consumption,” Tekauz said.
However he added it can be an issue for feed because hulls are part of the feed mix.
Work on the project is continuing as researchers screen western co-op test results for information on resistance in elite oat breeding lines and devise a ratings system for ranking resistance in current and future varieties.
If everything goes as planned, fusarium resistant oat varieties should be available commercially in nine or 10 years.
“Producers don’t like to hear it, but that’s just the way it is,” Tekauz said.
