Among the many insects, diseases and fungi that attack crops, one annually recurring issue is commonly known as wheat scab. The fungus usually causes yield decrease and its impact for this year’s crop is yet to be determined.
“Wheat scab is a disease we typically see every year and some years have lower levels than other years. We are currently in the process of going out and qualifying the amount of wheat head scab present in our fields right now in Van Wert County,” said OSU Extension Educator Andy Kleinschmidt.
How widespread a problem is depends on moisture levels in a particular stage of plant development.
“We see it when warm, wet weather persists during the heading and flowering period of wheat and the severity can vary greatly. We can see some heads that have 100 percent infection and others have little to no infection. Wheat scab is important because it does two things: first and foremost, it reduces yield. It also reduces the quality of the grain. We’re also concerned with vomitoxin, which is a chemical produced by the fungus that attaches to wheat and causes head scab,” Young explained.
Data is being compiled and processed by the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center in Wooster. Final numbers are not available but Allen County Extension Educator Curtis Young has not seen indications of a widespread problem in the area.
“In my observations of a few fields around the area, I haven’t seen a tremendous amount of head scab development. The flowering stage was a good month or go, if not a little bit longer. For the most part, for most of the state, based on predictive models, the threat of head scab was fairly low in most of the state,” he said.
Young says with broad statistics forthcoming, the best way for local farmers to know if there is a problem is to look at their crops as early as possible.
“One can still go out in their own field and do some assessment to see whether head scab is present or not. It will get more difficult with each passing day because it’s easy to see symptoms when the plant and spike are mostly green. As the wheat continues to mature, the dead heads from head scab will blend in more with ripening wheat and it will become more difficult to distinguish between what’s head scab and what’s maturing wheat,” he added.