A PhD STUDENT at the internationally renowned Rothamsted Research centre in the United Kingdom is working together with wheat breeder Syngenta to unlock the secrets to combating the damaging root disease take-all.
Take-all is a fungal disease that can cause total death of wheat and barley crops in extreme cases by attacking the root system.
Symptoms of the disease include prematurely ripening and stunted crops.
Student Joe Moughan said he had conducted research which may allow farmers to limit the impact of the disease through strategic rotations.
“We’ve found some elite winter wheat varieties limit take-all fungal growth around the roots when they are grown as first wheats (the first wheat in a rotation),” Mr Moughan said at the Cereals field day in Cambridgeshire earlier in the month.
“The project is now trying to identify if this trait can work in combination with a fungicide application to really limit the amount of take-all inoculum build-up.”
He said full scale field trials were being conducted at Rothamsted, in Hertfordshire in southern England, using the Syngenta fungicide Amistar.
“The trials include different rates of Amistar to see what the most effective applications are to prevent the disease.”
Along with that, he said efforts were being made by Syngenta breeders to use the trait found to limit take-all and include it in future winter wheat varieties for release.
The trait has been found in some commercial British winter wheats, such as the Cadenza cultivar, and limits the amount of inoculum build-up.
This is critical in British cropping systems, where wheat-on-wheat rotations are common.
· Gregor Heard travelled to the United Kingdom as a guest of Syngenta.