04/18/06 A stripe rust update

Farm and Ranch April 18, 2006 In an update issued late last week, Xianming Chen with the Agricultural Research Service at Pullman, Washington, said he had not found any stripe rust in wheat in central Oregon while checking fields along Highway 97. In western Oregon, Dr. Patrick Hayes reported stripe rust on barley in nurseries near Corvallis but did not find the disease on wheat in experimental plots or in fields along Highway 99. In western Washington stripe rust is on both wheat and barley in nurseries at Mt. Vernon and in some surrounding fields. Chen says he did not find any stripe rust in Washington's Horse Heaven Hills nor in the Connell area. He did get a report of stripe rust found in early planted irrigated winter wheat in south-central Washington and Chen will be confirming that this week. The ARS scientist has said stripe rust will be occurring later this year than in 2005 in most eastern wheat and barley producing areas in the Pacific Northwest. Chen said the hard white spring wheat Blanca Grande might be more susceptible to stripe rust this year. He says in California a field of the variety was quite uniformly infected this spring with severities up to 80 percent. Chen says the spring wheats Hank, Western Plant Breeders 926, Tara and ID 377s will also be more vulnerable this year. He says Alpowa and Louise should be fine. Chen says if you haven't yet decided between planting spring wheat or barley, go with barley as it is generally under less stripe rust pressure than spring wheat. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.