The province received variable precipitation this spring which had pathologists and producers expecting the arrival of members of the leaf spot complex. However, Kelly Turkington with the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Lacombe Research and Development Centre said they may have been scorched by the July heat wave.

That’s no reason for farmers not to scout their fields. A late arrival of stripe rust spores blew into the province in late June, said Turkington. They likely originated in the state of Washington.

“Towards the early part of July there were reports (of stripe rust) out of Warner County and Vulcan County from a consultant and some reports in Lacombe County and then down the Highway Two corridor towards Calgary, both west and east,” he said.

Depending on the point in the season growers seeded, a stripe rust presence in cereal fields may mean a fungicide application, he said. Early-seeded crops may be out of luck from a timing perspective, but producers that seeded later may still have time to tackle the rust.

Those who may still have the chance to spray for stripe rust include those who seeded spring wheat for swath grazing or silage in late May or early June.

“Often we’ve seen in the past our worst stripe rust problems in those late-seeded fields where you might be looking at silage or swath grazing, especially where the variety is highly susceptible,” said Turkington.

Watch Glacier FarmMedia publications for more on this story.

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The optimal temperatures for stripe rust development are 10-15°C with periods of high relative humidity but as observed in Ontario, stripe rust can develop at higher temperatures. Windy days will also help with spore dispersion. Stripe rust causes yellow to orange, blister-like lesions that are arranged in stripes on the leaf of the wheat plant.

If left untreated, stripe rust can cause significant yield reductions. In a recent OMAFRA Field Crop News report, Cereals Specialist Joanna Follings and Field Crop Pathologist Albert Tenuta said in 2016 and 2017, where growers had a high incidence of stripe rust that was not controlled through appropriate variety selection or fungicide application, yields were reported to be as low as 45 bu./ac.

Integrated Stripe Rust Management

Follings and Tenuta said the best defense against stripe rust is a combination of variety selection, scouting and timely fungicide applications. In Ontario winter wheat varieties, there are large differences in variety susceptibility to the disease. The authors suggest growers should check with their seed supplier and the Ontario Cereal Crops Committee performance trials for specific variety ratings (www.GoCrops.ca). Stripe rust ratings can be found under the head to head feature or check out the 2016 and 2017 historical reports.

If a variety has a rating of 6 or higher the variety is susceptible to stripe rust and will benefit from a fungicide application if stripe rust is present. If a variety is rated 3 to 5 then it is considered moderately resistant and should be scouted for stripe rust regularly during the growing season. If stripe rust is present and appears to be challenging the upper leaves of the canopy in these moderately resistant varieties Follings and Tenuta said growers may want to consider a fungicide application, particularly if the wheat is just at flag leaf.

As seen in 2017, some growers got caught with a severe disease infestation 10 days before the T3 fungicide application timing and had significant yield losses as a result. However, if stripe rust incidence and severity was low on these tolerant varieties and growers were less than a week away from fusarium fungicide timing then growers were able to wait. If a variety in your area has a rating less then 2 than this indicates that the variety is resistant against stripe rust and will likely not benefit from an early season fungicide application.

Now that the disease has been detected in the province, Follings and Tenuta suggest growers continue to scout fields. They said regular scouting assists in determining if disease infection is progressing up the plant and is critical in determining if a fungicide application is needed, and at what timing.

They said a lot depends on the level of infection, environmental conditions and crop susceptibility but by selecting resistant varieties and with regular crop scouting this disease can be managed effectively.

Most winter wheat fields in southwestern Ontario are at or beyond GS 45 (boot just visibly swollen). If winter wheat is beyond the swollen “head in boot” stage, a fungicide containing strobilurin should not be applied. For more information on fungicide selection  visit the OMAFRA Crop Protection Hub.

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Researchers working together at several locations around the world have cloned rust-resistance genes: Yr7, Yr5 and YrSP.

Why it matters: It’s hoped these genes can next be used in wheat-breeding programs to help battle stripe or yellow rust. The disease’s ability to adapt to several environments and different climates have made control difficult.

“We’ve cloned the first major resistant genes against this fungal pathogen,” Peng Zhang, the study’s co-author and University of Sydney scientist, told the Chinese news agency Xinhau.

“Everywhere they grow wheat, this has been a problem because the pathogen is very adaptive and very aggressive,” Zhang said.

Eventually, the breakthrough could offer farmers alternatives to fungicides, as resistant wheat varieties become available. Rust can kill as much as 70 per cent of crops in affected areas, if left untreated. As well, some rust pathogens have developed resistance to existing fungicides.

Staff from the University of Sydney (Australia), the John Innes Centre (United Kingdom), Limagrain (U.K.), the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (U.K.), and CSIRO (Australia) worked together on the project.

Scientists in the U.K. and Australia were separately working to identify mutant genes that could potentially help with rust resistance. They started collaborating in 2017 after learning they were working on similar projects.

The findings were published Aug. 30 in Nature Plants.

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Three agronomists gave an overview of the 2016 cropping season at the SouthWest Agricultural Conference in Ridgetown, outlining challenges and wins for the year.

Leanne Freitag, Cargill’s manager of agronomy for Ontario, outlined challenges with wheat, Steph Kowalski of Agronomy Advantage outlined soybean challenges and Russ Barker of DuPont Pioneer outlined the most unpredictable of 2016 crops: corn.

Ontario had record wheat yields, but that rapidly-growing wheat exposed some crop management gaps.

Freitag said she’s surprised at how many growers don’t apply sulphur on wheat, adding it’s simple to do and inexpensive.

“If you’re putting fertilizer on, make sure sulphur is in there,” she said. As the wheat grew rapidly towards a record yield, more sulphur deficiency symptoms showed up in the Ontario crop.

“Putting on 10-20 lbs. of sulphur is really important, and cheap to put on,” she said.

Where there’s a deficiency, the advantage can be 20 bushels of yield difference, she said. Watch the nitrogen to sulphur ratio: It should be 10:1 to 7:1.

Stripe rust was also an issue in wheat for the first time in memory. The disease overwintered further north than usual, Freitag said, and resulted in more damage than normal.

The greater prevalence of the disease showed which varieties of wheat are resistant and which are not. There is a significant difference, Freitag said, but cautioned not to base variety decisions only on resistance to stripe rust. Plant the best variety for your fields, and spray if required.

“Stripe rust is the biggest yield robber of any of the foliar diseases in wheat,” said Freitag. “It can take 50 per cent or more of your yield.”

Spray when symptoms are seen, she added. “Keeping the flag leaf clean is critical.”

The wheat crop came out of the soft winter with little winter kill, which likely helped the wheat put down roots deep enough that it was able to find enough moisture to pull through the dry summer. Altogether it resulted in a record wheat harvest.

Spider mites everywhere

Soybeans pulled through the summer drought in Ontario in most cases — but not for lack of trying by some insects.

Scouting is the best way to stay ahead of spider mites, Kowalski said. Treat the crop with timely spraying. Be careful what insecticide is used, however, as you don’t want to take out all the beneficial insects, along with the spider mites.

Weed control was a challenge for soybeans in 2016, as there often wasn’t enough moisture to activate pre-emergent herbicides. If the weather is hot and dry, spray early in the morning for systemic herbicides and in the evening for contact herbicides.

Fungicides made sense on soybeans, said Kowalski, as long as you got a timely rain. She says use the whole decisions tree on whether or not to spray fungicides. Don’t just not do it because of weather.

Barker said he worries about blanket recommendations to spray fungicides, due to potential resistance and other overuse issues. “It gives me the heebee-jeebees.”

Good base fertility was important to pulling soybeans through to good yield in 2016.

Unpredictable corn

There were times this growing season that Russ Barker just told farmers to stay out of their corn fields. The fields were just too depressing to visit. He also told them that the fields would yield better than they expected, and he was right about that.

A wise plant breeder once told him that cob size was a poor indicator of potential yield, he said. More important is the depth of kernels and kernel flex. The strongest hybrids will produce a deeper kernel late into the growing season.

“Remember that the growing season is a marathon, not a sprint,” he said.

The response of corn to fungicides is well documented — an average seven to eight bushels per acre advantage, he said. Each farmer has to determine if it makes sense economically on their farm.

Where it does make sense, he said, is on silage corn and corn fed to hogs, as the fungicide reduces mycotoxin load for hogs and dairy farmers need to maximize the quality of feed going into the feed bunk.

Two other unpredicted and especially frustrating problems appeared with the corn harvest last year. The first is the amount of Gibberella ear rot on corn, which surprised the industry by showing up in high levels of infection.

“We’re not a whole lot smarter on Gibberella. We still can’t predict it very well.”

Western bean cutworm (WBC) was also a larger issue as it overwintered further north than usual, and continued its long-term growth into new areas of the province.

The WBC was first seen in Ontario in 2008 and became economically significant in 2010, Freitag said. The problem in 2016 is that it appeared in fields where farmers had scouted and didn’t find egg masses.

“We can’t scout with a high level of assurance that it won’t be an issue,” she said. The industry has to sort out how to monitor for the pest, but the answer likely lies in paying closer attention to trap numbers.

Farmers need to make economic and risk assessment decisions on whether or not to spray for WBC, at least until better biotech solutions for control, such as the Viptera trait, are bred into more widely used hybrids.

— John Greig is a field editor for Glacier FarmMedia based at Ailsa Craig, Ont. Follow him at @jgreig on Twitter.

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However, soggy conditions have also enabled certain disease pressures to rear their ugly head, according to some government specialists.

“Root rot is showing up in peas and lentils,” said Brent Flaten of Saskatchewan Agriculture in Moose Jaw.

In addition to the rot, the fields were also feeling the effects of pythium and water mould (aphanomyces euteiches).

In a few cases, some lentil fields were virtually wiped out, though most are OK — “kind of hit-and-miss depending on how much rain or water the field retained,” he said.

Flaten said he is also fielding questions from producers wondering whether to spray for sclerotinia in canola or leaf diseases.

“There’s probably even more acres where people are worried about (fusarium) head blight or sclerotinia than the root rot.”

Issues are similar in Manitoba, with both fusarium and root rot cited as problems.

However, provincial field crop pathologist Pratisara Bajracharya said there is another familiar name working its way in from the U.S.

“Leaf rust is in some Manitoba locations as well as near the Montana and North Dakota border,” she said.

As a result, Bajracharya is asking producers to scout their fields in the lower canopy to look for both leaf rust as well as stripe rust.

“That is for wheat, barley and small-grain cereal crops,” she said.

Root rot has been an issue for soybeans, while one canola field near Carman, Man. had a bit of blackleg.

“In general, lots of different diseases were showing up this year compared to other years,” she said.

Both specialists agree further rains will only exacerbate the problem.

— Dave Sims writes for Commodity News Service Canada, a Winnipeg company specializing in grain and commodity market reporting. Follow CNS Canada at @CNSCanada on Twitter.

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For now, the immediate challenge before growers is to get out and scout their wheat fields. According to Dale Cowan, senior agronomist with Agris Co-operative, the worst-hit region for stripe rust at week’s end is west of Thamesville in Chatham-Kent, south of Highway 401 and down along the Lake Erie shoreline into Essex County.

This is the region, Cowan said, where the rust spores were first blown in and deposited, and where the disease is most advanced.

But there have been additional sightings farther north, even into Grey and Bruce counties. And no matter where it’s found, growers need to act quickly to avoid significant losses in yield.

“It’s at the point where you want to keep the flag leaf clean because it produces 70 per cent of the yield, and it’s sporulating very quickly and moving very fast,” said Cowan.

“The next stage we’d consider a fungicide would be T3 (head stage), so what we’re advising is that you have to keep the flag leaf clean with a T2 (flag leaf) fungicide.”

The problem began farther south in the U.S. — and Cowan noted it was already 400 miles further north into Kentucky than it normally should have been.

Even for a grower with crops three days away from a head spray (at T3, growth stages 59 to 65), the disease is advancing so quickly that waiting those three days to save money could cost him or her 50 per cent of a field.

In the past three days, Twitter has seen a variety of photos depicting the extent of the spread of the disease. One individual photographed his lower legs and boot tops covered in yellow-orange spores, just from walking through a field. Another shows the soil between rows with the same yellow-orange colouration.

“Once the flag leaf is gone, you’re going to take a 50 to 60 per cent yield hit,” said Cowan. “If you don’t spray the flag leaf now and you’re going to wait for T3, there’ll be nothing worth protecting even three or four days from now. If you’re a week away from heading, you have to make two passes through the field or you just won’t have anything worth spraying at T3.”

The fungicides a grower would use for T1 (tiller) or T2 (flag leaf) cannot be used if the awns are showing or the heads emerging, Cowan warned. Those particular fungicides carry a strobilurin, which will increase levels of deoxynivalenol (DON) — and the risk of DON infection is extremely high, as well.

“We have this situation where we have rust, where we can lose half our yield, or DON, which will make the crop unsalable,” Cowan said, adding that neither is a great option.

“Those are your two choices, so you can’t just sit there and ignore this crop because you won’t have a wheat crop if you’re badly infected. And the first step is you have to get out and scout your fields!”

— Ralph Pearce is a field editor for Country Guide at St. Marys, Ont. Follow him at @arpee_ag on Twitter.

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The diseases, which generally target cereal crops, were thought to have blown up from the northern U.S. in late spring. Fields near Carman and Killarney both tested positive for rust in winter and spring wheat.

Recent warm weather, however, appears to have dealt the two rusts a deadly blow.

“Not with this heat — rust doesn’t enjoy 30 C days, even though we’ve had precipitation; it’s just been too hot,” said Pam de Rocquigny of Manitoba Agriculture, Food and Rural Development in Carman.

She credited producers in the affected areas for scouting fields and applying fungicides where needed, as the main reasons for the diseases’ departure.

The ag department’s focus now shifts to fusarium head blight, she said, as now is the time the crops traditionally show symptoms.

“Usually about 21 days after flowering — that’s when you start to see the symptoms on the wheat heads,” she said.

Already, a few stands of winter wheat have exhibited signs of fusarium.

Infection generally occurs at the flowering stage, so the timeline for applying fungicide for suppression has passed, de Rocquigny said.

“But we haven’t sampled enough fields yet. We expect to know more in a week or so.”

— Dave Sims writes for Commodity News Service Canada, a Winnipeg company specializing in grain and commodity market reporting.

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Stripe rust and leaf rust appear to have blown in from the United States.

Pam de Rocquigny of Manitoba’s agriculture department said the two rust strains were observed at extremely low severity in MCVET winter wheat plots at Carman. Also, a patch of stripe rust was found in a winter wheat field southwest of Killarney.

“Stripe and leaf are just across the border from us, so I guess it was just a matter of time until we started to see those diseases appear here in Manitoba.”

Rust diseases are sporadic on a year-to-year basis, she said. Right now is an opportune time for them, though, as winter wheat is flowering and spring wheat is advancing at a steady rate.

“Some of it’s in the flag leaf, so we’re 10 days away from that crop heading out and starting to flower,” she said, adding farmers should definitely be scouting their cereal crops.

Fortunately, both strains of rust can be managed with fungicides and are still relatively scarce, according to de Rocquigny.

“I don’t think there’s a cause for real concern at this point.”

— Dave Sims writes for Commodity News Service Canada, a Winnipeg company specializing in grain and commodity market reporting.

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