Lancaster and Janesville Winter Wheat May 31 2011

Finishing the two-day trip to check on our wheat studies, today I visited the Lancaster and Janesville locations. Wheat at both of these locations is rapidly advancing, with Lancaster being at a very solid Feekes 10.5 (inflorescence completely emerged), while at Janesville, the growth stage ranged from Feekes 10.1 (first inflorescence spikelet visible) to 10.5 (inflorescence completely emerged).

With where the wheat growth stages are in the southern part of the state, this means we should be paying critical attention to the weather and risk of Fusarium head blight infection. A check of the Fusarium Head Blight Prediction Center today for the southern third of Wisconsin indicated that the risk of FHB infection was low, except for a few pockets along the Illinois border that were in the moderate range. However, looking at the one to three day forecast, the risk of FHB infection is predicted to be low. A foliar fungicide would not be recommended at the current moment. We will continue to monitor conditions during this week as well as over the next couple of weeks to provide updates for the risk of FHB as well as management recommendations. For information regarding products that can be effective at suppressing FHB (with well-timed applications), please check here. Pay close attention to individual fungicide labels especially in regards to the latest growth stage that a product can be applied as well as any pre-harvest intervals for applications.

What about other diseases? As I scouted at both locations today, there were three main diseases noted including BYDV, Septoria lead blotch, and powdery mildew. Across the four locations assessed the past two days, the BYDV at Lancaster had the highest incidence and the incidence of this disease at Janesville was similar to what we observed at Arlington yesterday. Powdery mildew also appeared to be slightly more severe at Lancaster than at the other locations, although symptoms were still mostly in the lower canopy to the flag-3 or flag-2 leaf, depending on variety. The two videos below provide some pictorial evidence of what was being seen for both diseases at Lancaster.