Skip to main content
SLU publication database (SLUpub)

Abstract

There are 32 diseases of agronomical importance in wheat, which makes disease management in this crop of worldwide importance extremely challenging. Wheat diseases afecting the leaves and the ears are major drivers of chemical fungicides use in Sweden and worldwide. Swedish felds are regularly infested with head blight diseases caused by a complex of Fusarium and non-fusarium taxa, head molds caused by weakly pathogenic or saprophytic fungi such as Alternaria species, and leaf blotches caused by Zymoseptoria tritici, Pyrenophora tritici-repentis, and Parastagonospora nodorum. In this work, we isolated and characterized fungal taxa associated with wheat ears and leaf blotches in nation-wide survey in collaboration with the Plant Protection Extensions of the Swedish Board of Agriculture. The overall aim was to increase our understanding of the wheat disease landscape in Sweden, and create a useful collection of feld isolates. Here, we analyze nearly a thousand isolates collected from wheat felds across eight counties and report the identifcation of pathogenic and non-pathogenic taxa associated with wheat ears and leaf blotch symptoms. We propose that such surveys are necessary and useful for supporting disease diagnostics and guiding pathogen population monitoring in Sweden.

Keywords

Wheat; Head blight; Head mold; Leaf botch; Sweden

Published in

European Journal of Plant Pathology
2025

SLU Authors

UKÄ Subject classification

Agricultural Science

Publication identifier

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10658-025-03096-z

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/142883