S4E24: Small Grain Assessment and Head Scab

Recorded: 6/22/26 

As we prepare for small grain harvest, join us as we talk with Penn State experts about the latest approaches to assessing small grain health and productivity. In this episode, we dive into head scab (Fusarium head blight), including how to identify it and understand its impacts. 

Hosts: Justin Brackenrich and Dwane Miller, Penn State Extension
Guests: Dr. Daneila Carrijo, Dr. Alyssa Collins, Penn State

Links:
Home Stretch: Evaluating Your Small Grain Crops
Crop Protection Network
Fusarium Head Blight of Wheat
Scab Risk Tool
Fungicide Efficacy for Control of Wheat Diseases

Sign up for our newsletter, Field Crop News, and follow us on Facebook!

Transcript

Dwane Miller (00:18)
Hi folks, welcome back to Penn State's Agronomy Highlights podcast. I'm your host for this episode, Dwane Miller, and I'm joined with my co host from the West, Justin Brackenrich. Justin, how you doing today?

Justin Brackenrich (00:30)
I'm good, Dwane How about yourself?

Dwane Miller (00:32)
Doing well, thanks. Hey, we're getting some timely rain here, at least in the eastern part of the state. We were due for a drink. We were pretty dry. ⁓ so we're recording this on the 22nd of June, and we should have this episode out to you here in a couple days. So I think it's very, very timely information. We're gonna talk today about ⁓ small grains, head scab, wheat, those type of things. And as I'm

Driving around the last couple days, I've seen some combines in the field when we had some sunshine. I think they were taking off some barley here locally. Justin, anything happening in in the western part of the state with small grains coming off?

Justin Brackenrich (01:13)
Not really. we're we're really starting to ripen. I think we're getting close. one of the questions that that I may throw at them and talk about a little bit is our concerns for lodging. We've had a lot of hard storms coming through with a lot of wind, a lot of heavy rain. And so, you know, we may throw that out there as a ⁓ a gotcha question because it wasn't on their their short list of things. But as we're talking about it, I think that could be something relevant to us over here.

Dwane Miller (01:37)
Hey. And hey, speaking of our guests, let's take an opportunity to introduce our guests for today. We've got two experts from Penn State, one based in the southeastern part of the state, one in the central part of the state. Introduce ⁓ first ⁓ Dr. Daniela Carrijo. Daniela you want to say hi to our guests?

Daniela Carrijo (01:54)
hi everybody. I'm Daniela. I'm at University Park and State College here in central Pennsylvania. I am an agronomist. I work as the grain crop production extension specialist here at Penn State and I've been here for ⁓ almost five years now. Yeah. Thanks for having me in.

Dwane Miller (02:11)
Great. Thanks for taking an opportunity to to be on the show. And our other guest comes to us from the southeastern part of the state, Dr. Alyssa Collins. Alyssa, introduce yourself and say hi.

Alyssa Collins (02:24)
Yeah, hey, always a pleasure. ⁓ I am Alyssa Collins and I am the director of the Penn State Southeast Agricultural Research and Extension Center, which is a Penn State Research and Extension farm in Lancaster County. and I'm also an associate research professor in plant pathology. So ⁓ the other part of my day job is to do field crops-based plant pathology and ⁓ do a lot of extension around that. So I'm a fungus person.

Dwane Miller (02:53)
we won't hold that against you today.

Justin Brackenrich (02:55)
We liked Ryan a lot and I guess it's just one of those things, right? You have to let infiltrate and get in so far every now and again.

Dwane Miller (03:02)
so we're gonna talk again today about ⁓ small grains and ⁓ in particular maybe some things in wheat, but one of our first questions and I'll pitch this to to Daniela is as we get close to harvest.

And like I just mentioned, we saw some combines running here a little bit earlier. what are some key things that growers should be thinking about, looking at well as they get into their fields, running into harvest now?

Daniela Carrijo (03:29)
Yeah, sure, Dwane. about at this stage, a lot of our fields are I'll take close at that hard doughy stage when the when you dig into the kernel and you can still separate it, but it's a little, you know, like a really a hard dough ⁓ type of texture. And at that stage it's a good stage to to go out and look at the fields and you can even do a yield estimate. That's one thing we did.

Recently at the with the Mid Atl Mid Atlantic wheat tour we toured a bunch of fields and looked and did yield estimates because about this at this time you already have heads that are set in the field. You can count spike lits per head. And so you can get an idea of you know a good idea of the the yield for each field. Obviously things can happen between now and harvest, but at this point.

most of the season is past us. So it's a good timing to do a yield estimate.

Daniela Carrijo (04:23)
Yeah, so we go out and choose some representative areas of your field to five feet.

Daniela Carrijo (04:28)
And we usually do

a segment, a linear segment of your row. and then we count the number of heads in that five feet heads, and then we take some heads and count the number of spikelets per head and also the number of kernels per head and per

Daniela Carrijo (04:36)
It's

Daneila Carrijo (04:49)
spike lit and that's usually more of an estimation because each spike lid can get from anywhere from like two, three, four, sometimes even

Daniela Carrijo (04:56)
five

kernels per spikelet. But I'd say an average number is usually two and a half that we use. And so

Daniela Carrijo (05:05)
That leaves out just a seed size

Daniela Carrijo (05:07)
that we still don't know at this time, but if you multiply all of those yield components, you can get a yield estimate.

Daniela Carrijo (05:14)
⁓ doing some estimates is always nice. I know we're generally expecting a lower, harvest this year compared to previous years. And we actually just had a meeting a couple of weeks ago and

regional in Pennsylvania and our wheat yield estimates are generally low as we've seen so far, but not as low as nationwide. But so, you know, that's a good thing. We're not we're low, but everywhere is is not good. ⁓ I just saw a report from the USDA recently that we're expecting the lowest crop since nineteen sixty five overall in the US. So things are definitely not great. So I just wanna say that also as a thing for

folks who are doing yield estimates to ⁓ brace themselves, but you know, compared to the rest of the nation, we're not doing so bad. So that's one good piece of positive information there, at least.

I was gonna mention other things we can look at at this stage, in addition to like yield potential yield estimates is ⁓ lodging, as we were just talking about. Take a look at lodging, ⁓ weed escapes also, a lot of late season weeds can can happen at this time. And the quality of the grain as well. you can look at late season diseases, and I'm sure Alyssa will talk more about that in a little bit. Other things that can happen late.

in the season is pre harvest sprouting. I don't think we've had some of that that I have seen, but it can always happen, especially when we have wet conditions close to harvest. so all of that you can take a look and that'll help you plan some things for harvest, how you're gonna go about harvesting and storing your grains and I think also thinking back of management practices for each field and thinking ahead for next year. Anything that's valuable that's

That would be interesting to change for next year.

Justin Brackenrich (07:05)
One of the things that I always struggle with, it doesn't matter if it's small grains or corn or beans, is accurately assessing yield. Right. Like we're going out into this big field and we're trying to ⁓ take three feet or if it's corn seventeen feet, then we're trying to like summarize that down and and every year after I do it I tell the producer this is the yield, you know, that we estimate and they always call me back to just make sure I know my yield was lower than what they actually got, right? They didn't want me to leak in that information. but like in this case with

with you and the small grains, how many of those are you taking? Like how are you getting a good representation of what you would, expect to see out there? And then like what are you doing with that information? How do you use that to help you adjust through your combining practices?

how do you find the the average spot? You know, what are you looking for in a field? You don't want the super high, you don't want super low. how do how do you do that well? 'Cause I just don't. But you wanna be unbiased, but it's almost impossible to not have a bias when you go out there and start walking around looking at these things.

Daniela Carrijo (08:02)
Yeah, it's and it's and it's very hard thing a very hard thing to do. I think you wanna choose a representative spot. Now I think the more variation you have in that field, the harder it is to do that. So what I tend to do is if if it's a field that there when there's a lot of variation, I tend to do more spots.

And trying to always choose the something that's representative. So if you know, don't go to a very high, like low low area or a high area of the field. or if if you can't choose, maybe go to a high and a low. 'cause the idea is that that's gonna be representative of your whole field, right? So

You know, definitely avoid ⁓ if you have deer damage or if you have lodging or any or like a spot with a some like Barley yellow virus spot that's there, you don't want to go there unless it's across the whole field. and just generally with you know, you can look at the landscape, like if it's a low lying spot or like ⁓ definitely avo avoid headlands. So that's not gonna not gonna be representative of the whole field.

Yeah, the idea is to be representative. And so if it's really variable, it's hard to do with just three spots. I would do a f ⁓ more than that just to get a better average.

Dwane Miller (09:20)
Kinda like soil testing, right? We can go grab one one quick sample and send it in and it's only gonna give us the data we put into it. So I think that is a really good point.

Justin Brackenrich (09:31)
We spent some time like what two or three episodes ago talking about this with like re plants, right? Like how do you go out and how do you like assess this? And one of the ideas that we came up with is I think it might have been like a Google AI suggestion, was kind of pick your spots before you go, right? Get on a map and find them. And that's gonna help take out that bias or that like you getting out there and saying, well, I don't want to do this one or that one. So I don't I don't think it's a unique problem, right? I think a lot of people have a hard time figuring out.

how to take the variants out of out of something like that.

Daniela Carrijo (10:02)
Yeah, if you wanna choose do that beforehand and or like without any information, let's say, if a field is pretty uniform, ⁓ pretty straightforward way to do this is just go on a zigzag pattern, for example. ⁓ or in a W pattern. ⁓ but still I I I'd like to I'd like to do that, but it's but it's still let's say if you end up in a spot in your zigzagging, you end up in a spot that's

totally lodged or something that's an outlier in that field and just move away from that. But yeah, you can always do a zigzag or like choose look at the map before. If you have like a a yield map, for example, that's a good good way to do it too. just look looking at that yield map before beforehand and choosing some representative spots to do that yield estimate.

Dwane Miller (10:51)
Well, I think it's one thing to go into a field and and look at the yield potential that it has. And my thoughts, when we turn to small grains is that the quality of the grain can have a a huge impact on on the marketability and everything that comes downstream. And we've seen situations where you go in the field, you kind of assess things, things look pretty good, and then all of a sudden

Maybe the weather turns south and and we've got some big issues to talk about and and address. And maybe that happens sometimes with some of our other row crops like corn and beans, but it seems like the small grain gets its attention pretty quickly because boy, when it's time to get that crop off the field and we don't get that done in a timely fashion, things get pretty complicated for us. I want to turn our attention to

one of the primary diseases here in small grains that we like to address and that's that's head scab. And I'm gonna ask Alyssa, all right, lit talk to me about some conditions that are favorable for scab here, Pennsylvania. What are what are producers looking for if they get out into their field, primarily this time of year prior to harvest?

Alyssa Collins (12:05)
Yeah, so scab is one of our worst wheat diseases, right? Because not only can it affect our yield and quality, but it also can produce a mycotoxin that we're all pretty concerned about because we don't want that level of contamination in our food and feed. And so scab is also known as fusarium head blight So it's a disease caused by a fungus, and this fungus is pretty much present in our area all the time.

⁓ so there's plenty of inoculum, the spores that can cause this floating around in our environment most of the time, because this fungus can also infect corn and barley and a few other things. So we've we've got plenty of stuff for it to eat. and the times that we start to worry about being at risk for this infecting our crop are times where we're starting to get humid.

And soggy and also like mild in temperatures. So about the the month or 40 days ahead of when our wheat or barley flowers, those are the conditions that the fungus is either producing a whole, you know, growing and producing a lot of inoculum, all those spores that can blow around and infect. And if we have really humid and soggy conditions.

Along with pretty mild temperatures leading up to the time that your small grain is flowering, that's when we have high levels of inoculum floating around and the ability for that inoculum to infect our wheat or small other small grains. So that's anthesis, is what we call when wheat starts to flower. And that's basically the super highway for this spore to get into the plant.

Because this fungus is not very good at getting into the plant by like punching a hole through it like some other fungi do. It actually just exploits that opening in the plant and gets in there and takes advantage of that. so we're looking at that period of time leading up to that, open window basically in wheat, looking at how favorable that is for the fungus to develop. And if you think about conditions that fungi like.

⁓ you can think about, most people have a basement or a bathroom where you could get some mold growth. And the conditions that favor mold growth are just like the conditions that favor fungal growth in other places. And that's humid, mild, wet, those sorts of things. So when we have those conditions in the Northeast and they line up with the flowering of the wheat, that's when we start to worry about getting a lot of infection from this disease.

And more often than not, we do have those conditions as wheat is getting to that point in the Northeast, which is what makes it more challenging for us out here compared to some of our neighbors in the upper Midwest or the the northwest parts of the United States and into Canada. So we always have those conditions almost all the time. Sometimes it's worse than others. Last year was ⁓ a really intense year for that. we're hoping this year is much better.

⁓ so fingers crossed.

Justin Brackenrich (15:16)
So Alyssa, there's gotta be ⁓ a bunch of different fungal diseases that can affect wheat. Why do we spend so much time talking about fusarium? Why why is that one so important to us?

Alyssa Collins (15:27)
Yeah, so that one, it can not only cause this yield loss that a lot of different diseases will cause, but the fungus itself, as part of trying to get into the plant and move through the plant and infect it further once it does gain access, it produces a chemical and it's just a metabolic byproduct. Like the fungus is doing this chemical thing to get into the plant, and it's producing this chemical as part of that called deoxinovalinol.

And we shorten that to Don, D-O-N. and you've also maybe heard it called vomitoxin. We have the most delightful names in plant pathology, right? We call it scab and vomitoxin. At least it makes you remember it.

Dwane Miller (16:07)
You guys are you guys are fear mongering, I'm telling ya.

Alyssa Collins (16:10)
We're filthy and disgusting and you never forget our names. but you know, you don't want scab because it gives you vomitoxin and you don't want vomitoxin because you don't want ⁓ your consumers and your animals that you're feeding to have feed refusal and ⁓ GI issues, things like that. This toxin is readily produced by the fungus.

It's not always produced by the fungus, even if you get infection. It has to do with the biology of the fungus and the environmental conditions, whether or not it gets bad. So just because you do see signs of the fungus doesn't necessarily mean you have really high toxin levels, but it is a clue that you should check that out. Similarly, you might not see signs of the fungus, and vomitoxin can still be produced kind of in a hidden way.

There might be some latent infection that you might not be able to see. So it's not all one or all the other, but these ⁓ are linked pretty closely, and having one will give you a clue that you probably have the other. so vomitoxin, really nasty stuff. It's probably not our worst mycotoxin that exists in agronomy, but it is one of our most abundant, I would say.

Justin Brackenrich (17:28)
I know that's not what we're here for, but you can't just open that door so what would be the worst one that we have? Okay.

Alyssa Collins (17:34)
Aflatoxin.

Aflatoxin is produced by the fungus Aspergillus flebus, and that's why they call it aflatoxin. And that is an ear rot on corn. That's more common in the southern US and other parts of the world where there are more arid conditions, because this is one of the rare fungi that actually like hot, dry conditions, and they kind of exploit that.

⁓ so luckily we don't typically have it in Pennsylvania, at least not to any notable extent. so at least we got that going for us.

Justin Brackenrich (18:07)
Yeah, I mean we can file that in the the more you know department, right? ⁓ so so you or Daniela, either one, you both you both may want to tackle this at some point. ⁓ how do we distinguish scab from other fungal diseases we would see in our wheat?

Alyssa Collins (18:22)
Yeah, so I can take the first part of that. so scab is actually pretty easy to diagnose if you hit it at the right time. And the right time is to figure out when your wheat flowered. Hopefully you were already trying to figure that out because you were wanting to spray it that time if you needed to. so if you calculate forward then three weeks, that's when you should be able to start seeing symptoms of this disease.

So unfortunately, this is not one of those diseases that we can go out and scout for ahead of making a spray decision because it doesn't show itself until about three weeks after it has already infected and done its damage. But at that point, you can see that kernels may be bleached out. So the way it moves through the plant is it'll gain access through one kernel and/or you know, the pre-kernel situation there.

⁓ and then it will grow within that head to other kernels. So you might see like a cluster of kernels that are affected, and they'll look bleached out. they may be aborted depending on how early the damage was done there. And if you have humid conditions, you might start to see like a little light orange pinky coloration that will be the spores growing, you know, the next generation.

of fungus to to spread around and make more fungus in your field. and so those you can get a really good sense of how much infection and potentially mycotoxin you have in any given field about three weeks after flowering. And you would want to do that then before your wheat starts to change to the the yellow straw color that we look for when things are ripening. So this would be while

Most of the head is still green, and you can really see that distinct difference between the affected and the unaffected. And the thing that this might actually resemble that you might want to do some further digging into is cold temperature damage or freeze damage. ⁓ Daniela, did you want to say anything about what that looks like when we're dealing with ⁓ with freeze damage in wheat and barley?

Daniela Carrijo (20:37)
⁓ yeah, I think the easiest thing to to distinguish those is the light think the light pink, orange color ⁓ coloration that you mentioned in the kernel, because then that's really a sign of the scab, right? but outside of that it's the timing. if you have the frost can happen ear earlier, usually not usually later than that, but usually earlier we can have a frost event. And so is that bleached.

If you see that bleached kernels and that's before flowering, then definitely ⁓ that should not be scab and probably it will be a frost damage. but outside of the the without the timing, it's it's it is it can be confusing. ⁓ if they can re really resemble each other, but I would say definitely the the coloration if it does have that.

pink orange coloration, then that's definitely scab, not a frost, for not frost damage. And and the timing. So yeah, if it's earlier than firing, ⁓ then that you eliminate scab, it should not be scab and probably could be a frost damage. The other thing with frost damage too is that happens in the head and even if it's n if it's earlier than before heading is sometimes it gets twisted so the head

⁓ the head itself twists a little bit and if it happens before the the stem like or the flag leaf gets a little twisted and that so that's a frost damage very typical frost damage sign ⁓ and it you can see if it happens in the flag leaf you can even see that like all the way throughout not what not when it's senesting but if it's still green you can see that twisting pattern ⁓ for a long time there so that's a sign

And then you can always, think about the weather also. If there was a frost event, then about within about a week, like a few days within a week, you're gonna see that frost damage. So if that didn't if that didn't happen within that week after frost damage, then probably it's not that. then that's just the other thing that sometimes gets confused with with the bleaching.

It's not frost, but sometimes we have what we call a physiological ⁓ problem. ⁓ usually it's just the the entire tiller gets aborted because of competition within tillers, for example. And then usually that the the whole head is bleached and even like the whole plant, like if you look at the stems, everything is just white, whereas everything else is green. And in that case, it that's usually

Just ⁓ yeah, like a an abort a whole abor aborted tiller and not scab or frost.

Dwane Miller (23:16)
all right, we get in, we're examining our fields, we do see some scab in there, for example. Is there a certain level percentage of heads that we'd be concerned about to draw attention, or how how do we manage that if we start to see scab present in the fields?

Alyssa Collins (23:34)
Yeah, so it would be great if you went ahead and did some scouting at the same time you wanted to look at your yield potential, because then you could hit those two birds with one stone. I would hit probably 10 areas in a field, and at each of those spots, grab a handful of about 10 heads and look at those. You can do your yield assessment at the same time.

⁓ and that makes the math easy, right? 10 times 10, and then each head you're looking at represents one tiller. If you see, one to two of those tillers in all of those spots that you're hitting affected by scab, that would be something that you might want to either contact your insurance about.

⁓ and see if you may be looking at high scab levels, high Don levels, and see what they would want you to do in that case because they might need to come out and help you file a claim. And if that is the case and you're going to pursue that claim, they would need to be present before or at harvest to make sure a sample is collected that can be tested. otherwise, you may also be looking at

kind of high ish scab levels, but you might not end up having high DON You don't actually get to know that unless you send away a test to usually a Forage Analysis Lab will do that test for you. Or you can take it down to the elevator and, you know, they will test it along with everything else in your truck. and they will let you know exactly how much DON they're detecting in there. But

Before that, if you're getting a sense that, hey, I've got kind of high scab levels out here in this field, maybe some fields are worse than others. there's a few things you can do to kind of line yourself up well for harvest. I would say prioritize those fields and and get them out of the field sooner, maybe than some of your other fields, because it can get worse if it stands in humid conditions.

⁓ in the field that fungus can continue to move through the plant and make more mycotoxin. So you could harvest those fields before your others, even if they're a little bit on the wet side. at the prices I'm hoping to see for wheat this year, considering our our yields or and our plantings are down across the country, maybe that will look really good financially to pay for a little propane for drying.

And get that stuff off the field, make sure it does not get worse in quality. And then that also gives you the opportunity to get double crop beans in and maybe make a little more off those as well, because then you have some extra time for those in the field. so that's always a tough question for folks, but almost always it pays to get that grain off the field a little bit early and pay for a little bit of drying there. I'm not talking, you know.

huge tens of percentage points, but ⁓ most people are pretty happy when they do that with the quality that they're seeing in return. The other thing is when you have a scabby field, those those kernels are much lighter than a healthy kernel would be. a healthy kernel is dense, it has high test weight, it's ⁓ very different than one of those infected kernels that's lighter, it's kind of fluffy. And so you can

potentially adjust your combine settings to blow a lot of that stuff out the back. and it it will stay on your field, right? You still have that material to deal with, but at least it won't be in your bin and hopefully ⁓ you will be able to eliminate some of the DON that would otherwise go into the bin with them and just keep those healthy kernels.

The other thing I might mention is ⁓ there's not too much to do about mitigating scab and mitigating DON at this point in the season. but I think most people are keeping track of it pretty close around the time that we would apply a fungicide, which is at flowering for wheat. and that usually pays off in more ways than one. So that scab application.

Typically is going to help us with a lot of the late season head diseases that you might see in unsprayed areas. So things like black chaff, sooty mold, things like that, actually are well controlled with a scab fungicide treatment. And so people usually are are pretty pleased with that. And don't forget about your straw, right? Straw is another thing that people are are hoping to make out of these crops and

the fungicide treatment that we see go on at Scab usually pays us a lot in terms of quality when it comes to straw and ⁓ just having that nice bright straw that you might get top dollar for when you're going to sell it.

Daniela Carrijo (28:33)
Yeah, I would I would just add too that ⁓ prioritizing the harvest like Alyssa mentioned, it also it also helped with other issues as well. You've mentioned straw made me think of lodging, right? So if you have a lot of lodging, you can prioritize harvesting those fields first. Same thing with weeds if you have late season weeds, because those things are just gonna get worse as you delay harvest, the longer those things are in the field.

⁓ they're just gonna get worse. I guess maybe one exception to the weeds would be if you have weeds that are that have set seed, right? And have a lot of seeds. So maybe just that in that one case you would want to leave the as field for for less or not spreading your weeds around. but generally ⁓ with lodging and other issues at late season

The the longer they're in the field, the worse things are gonna get for both the grain and the straw quality.

Dwane Miller (30:38)
Question for either of you. as you harvest this grain, we talked about the problems with scab and the associated problems with the possibility of of Don or vomitoxin in that wheat. But beyond just a standard yield reduction, as we take it to the elevator, I know Dr. Collins mentioned, you can take it down there, they're gonna do a test for it.

How how does head scab affect the quality and and the marketability of that wheat as we take it off and and take it to market?

Alyssa Collins (31:10)
Yeah, so the way that it is measured at most elevators is they'll put a probe in a couple of places in your truck and pull out a sample. So this is going to be a pretty concentrated sample of just like one small area of your truck. And the good part is if they don't hit a scabby part of what is in your truck.

then you know they they don't they don't find that much and and maybe ⁓ you get a a really good price. On the other hand, if they hit the wrong place in there for you, then it could be like off the charts.

⁓ and that's one of the complaints we hear a lot when people say, ⁓ I went to the elevator and you know, I I took the truck through one time and they rejected me. And then maybe I went, you know, back and and tried again in another spot and it was okay. That's why. It's it's because the fungus ⁓ can make a lot of toxin in one small area. And so if you hit that pocket, then it's not gonna be evenly distributed.

around the entire amount of grain that you've got. So is it a perfect system? No, it's not. It's kind of just an index. And most elevators get a really good sense of the general quality of grain coming in from a region in a particular period of time. So they'll do more tests or fewer tests depending on what's coming through and what they're seeing. So again, it's it's not perfect, but that is the system that we're dealing with.

So that's part of it. We don't want that toxin in there. So it's it's that complicating factor in addition to that yield hit we're taking. but we can also see lower test weights. we can also end up with falling number issues depending on what this grain is going for. So this is ⁓ a little bit of a problem for everything, unfortunately, and requires some more sophisticated management.

I would say, because of all of these different implications it can have. And the other complicating factor, is that this fungus doesn't limit itself to just one delicious meal of wheat. It will also be very happy to eat your corn and cause vomitoxin problems in that and barley. And there's a few other oddball crops that'll also ⁓ infect as well. So this is ⁓ not.

The easiest disease to deal with, and it's something we're probably gonna have for a really long time. But the good news is there's a whole group of scientists who does nothing but work on this disease together. and so there's a a US initiative, it's a national thing, it's funded federally called the US

Wheat and Barley Scab Initiative. and it brings together folks that are pathologists like myself, with agronomists like Daniela, with geneticists who are studying the genes of the plant and the genes of the fungus, food scientists and those folks. So they've been working on this issue for a really long time, discovering a lot more about it. And our management is getting better and better every year because of that.

And we also have some really nice fungicides for it. It's just the the biology of it still is staying ahead of us to some extent.

Justin Brackenrich (34:31)
so I think like as we kind of move towards a wrap up, my question would be we try to learn something from everything, right? you've mentioned a couple of times that with this at this point in the year, there's nothing we can do much to stop it. There might be some management changes, it it harvests or some other ideas. let's start with Daniela. Daniela, how would you take a lesson away from this if you go out and you've got this really ⁓

scabby field, which sounds terrible, but you got a lot of scab out there. You're past that like twenty percent mark. How can you do better next year and what should you learn from this?

Daniela Carrijo (35:02)
well for next year I would think about the things you did this year, right? So if you sprayed a fungicide or not, you can think about the chemical. There's not a whole lot of options there, but the timing, as Alyssa said, is very critical. So think about the timing when you spray the environmental conditions that were there.

I know there's a tool that we can look into that forecasts the risk of scab for any given time and location that you're at. And maybe at least you can put that in the link here later. that's that's one tool in our in our box that we can use and decide on whether to spray or not. Like Alyssa said, we don't

see the symptoms. So you have to make that decision on spring versus not spring ahead of time. And the only thing we can look at at this point is the weather forecast, because the fungus is everywhere. And so the only thing missing really is the the environmental conditions. so I would think about yeah what I did in this year and look at fields individually too. I think farmers are

really good at doing that and knowing each field, like different risks with different fields. I think that applies maybe more to lodging than scab because we can have a field that's very prone to lodging versus another that's not. But you can think about fields individually and see where which fields it pays to do some practices versus others, either fungicide or ⁓

or plant grow growth regulator or nitrogen management, things like that. yeah, and then thinking thinking for next year, maybe just be more proactive at scouting as well. Not so much we can do there with SCAB, but at least like knowing our growth stages, keeping keeping an eye on the timing, I think is important.

Alyssa Collins (36:50)
Yeah, I would add genetics, genetics, genetics. There's nothing that is completely resistant to this disease that doesn't exist. But we can pair pretty good, moderately resistant varieties with a well-timed fungicide and get 80% control. Now that might not sound that great. Like obviously you want 100% control. but the way that wheat flowers makes that almost impossible because wheats

Opening its flowers at different times, and the different tillers on a same plant might flower, several days in distance from one another. So trying to time a fungicide perfectly is almost impossible unless you had your own personal drone that was running every single day, right? And spraying individual heads. That's we're not quite there yet. but you can

Stack the deck against these diseases with using several tools. And one of them is definitely talking to your seed dealer about what's a good agronomic variety for you that also has moderate resistance to this disease. I would say that's that's an easy no-brainer because you're already paying for the genetics. You know, you might as well get something that's going to give you a little bit of a a protection that way.

Daniela Carrijo (38:06)
Yeah, that's that's great thinking, Alyssa. Forget about the variety piece and with the lodging as well, same thing. You can look at ⁓ lodging ratings. So every seed company will have ratings for lodging ⁓ susceptibility or like sometimes they call it stem strength or just the height of the plant, and that can help you also think about ⁓ lodging risk and when choosing your varieties. and

It also made me think of something Alyssa I was talking with Alyssa the other day that I thought was very interesting. This is just on the research role yet, because we don't have precision planting really for for wheat, but this was a research where they related the wheat that was precision planted was less susceptible, ended up being have ended up having less scab because the field was more uniform, right? So because it was

pres more precisely planted, the tillers were all at the same growth stage, all at the same time. So the fungicide was applied to that field and got a really a better timing. If you think about all the tillers in that field being at the same growth stage, the fungicide got it got in at the right timing. And that so they correlated like the yield that was the field that was planted with a precision planted research planter in that case had less scab

because the fungicide efficacy was better in that case. So, that's the in the research world we don't have precision planters for wheat, at least at narrow row spacings nowadays. But you could think of that in, you know, in terms of regulating your planter, your seed depth, making things as uniform as possible. That might be

Another thing we think we can think about, to improve the the scab and grain quality there.

Dwane Miller (39:50)
I think for me, I wrote down when Alyssa was talking about we need to start paying attention maybe about forty days ahead of flowering, you know, for for some of these things and

Alyssa Collins (40:02)
Actually

you don't. There's a tool for that. So I'm happy to say

Dwane Miller (40:07)
So there's somebody who's gonna do the thinking for me. That's wonderful.

Alyssa Collins (40:11)
That right. Anything that can think for me a little bit more about things I don't want to think about so hard is great. And and we do have a a scab forecasting tool that you can use. So the information you need to bring to the table is what growth stage is my crop at right now? Because it can't tell you that. Only you know that. So you come.

When your wheat is coming out of boot it is looking like you're about to start flowering. And that's when I want you to visit ⁓ the scab risk tool because the tool does the work of thinking 40 days ahead. So you can go there and say, okay, here we are right now. My stuff is about to flower. How much at risk is it in my area?

And it will light up your area either red or orange or yellow, depending on how high risk it is. And you can take that into account and make your spray decisions based on that, along with you know, the other things you're of course probably thinking about is like, hey, my sprayer is in town today and I've got to make this decision now. it will calculate out for the next six days for you too.

So you can use that information in it to kind of triangulate what you're going to need to line up in your world in order to get that sprayed and get your wheat protected. I would say don't go too early. If you need to kind of squish one way or another, like I can't get exactly at flowering, I would go a little bit later because then you will at least have that that tissue

open and existing that you want to protect. If you spray it too early, then it won't necessarily get to that newly forming tissue. Most all of these fungicides do much better when you're already started to flower on half of your field at least. If you do need to go a little bit earlier, Moravis Ace gives you a little more wiggle room that way. But it's still better if you can apply it right when flowering is beginning.

Justin Brackenrich (42:22)
Okay. I know we have the risk assessment tool. We have some efficacy tables for people to look at. You know, we we know we might be a little bit late, but we're hoping that these will be a good place to categorize all of these resources and stuff for you for next year. So ⁓ I want to thank doctors Daniela Carrigio and Alyssa Collins for joining us today. ⁓

And if you guys have any other comments we'd we'd like to hear but otherwise we thank you for joining.

Alyssa Collins (42:46)
Thanks so much.

Daniela Carrijo (42:48)
Thank you.

Justin Brackenrich (42:49)
So Dwane, what what was your big takeaway from today?

Dwane Miller (42:53)
Well, I was thinking I had to pay attention, you know, this many weeks before flowering and Alyssa just told me, visit this website, plug and chug, tell us the growth stage and it's gonna do the thinking for me. I I actually wrote down genetics and that was one thing was well I was curious about and and the difference in susceptibility or resistance to s to this disease because it is something that we ⁓ we do talk quite a bit about.

⁓ the other thing that I think I got out of it was this is strictly not a wheat problem. We've got issues in corn and and barley as well. So anytime we're rotating our crops and pairing things, thinking about crop rotations, it's gonna come into play as well for us.

Justin Brackenrich (43:37)
So I think about like all the episodes we've done on ⁓ tar spot, right? their first tool in in suppressing this or their first tool in in not having as much issue is genetics. Right. Like anytime you talk to any of them about these kind of things, it's well, you need to work with your seed company. You need to look at variety trials because that's that's a harder hurdle to come back from if you have something that's very susceptible. So that that's kind of an interesting thing. The one that I took away.

there are not a lot of prophylactic treatments that we use in agronomy, right? There's not a lot of things that we just spray, whether it's an herbicide or anything like that, just assuming it's going to be there. But this is one of those. And it's not just something for someone that's selling to the bread or the flour market, right? This is for all small grains producers because we learned about ⁓ the sooty molds are the things that can be controlled by some of this later in the season. So

You know, I think it was it's always good for us to learn too. If you go back to some previous episodes, season three, episode twenty-two, we have about an hour that we did with Alyssa and Paul Esker on just specifically fusarium and some of these diseases where we didn't talk as much about management, but more of them specifically.

And also season four, episode twelve, we did one with ⁓ the disease clinic. we were shooting some notes back and forth with Alyssa that if you're in this diagnostic phase of this and you're trying to really figure out what it is, take advantage of that that Pennsylvania disease clinic, send in some samples and and confirm that this, hey, this is exactly what you got ⁓ and and go from there for that what did you learn this year thing.

Dwane Miller (45:11)
Okay, sounds good. Again, want to thank Alyssa, Daniela for joining us as we talk about our small grain assessments and in particular some conversations around scab and and vomitoxin. So hopefully harvest is gonna get underway here pretty soon. Things will be great. You might be listening to us in the combine cab. And ⁓ we hope that that the it's a low DON level for you this year as you take off that small grain. But again, some things to think about as we start to plan always for for the following years. So thanks again for joining us here on the Agronomy Highlights podcast. We'll catch you next time.