What is Wheat Roasted Disease?
Wheat scorch disease is one of the most dreadful and incurable wheat diseases of the last decades and should not be confused with wheat ear blight.
Contaminated seeds pose a major threat to wheat production in tropical regions by spreading through crop residues in the field and airborne spores that can travel long distances.
Wheat scorch is a rapidly spreading and devastating fungal disease that threatens food security in tropical regions of South America and South Asia. Wheat scorch, which directly affects the wheat ear, affects and deforms the wheat in less than a week after the first symptoms appear, leaving the farmers no time to fight.
Caused by the fungus Magnaporthe oryzae pathotype triticum (MoT), this disease can spread through contaminated seeds and survive on crop residues as well as spores that can travel long distances in the air.
This fungus can affect many herbaceous field crops, including rice and wheat. However, species-specific isolates of this pathogen usually infect limited species. That is, wheat isolates preferentially affect wheat plants, while alternatively a few more grain and grass species may be used as hosts.
In Which Regions of the World is Wheat Roasted?
This disease, first described officially in Brazil in 1985, affected 3 million hectares of wheat fields in South America in the early 1990s. The disease continues to seriously threaten wheat cultivation potential in the region.
In 2016, wheat scorch spread to Bangladesh and a serious epidemic was experienced. Affecting approximately 15,000 hectares of land in eight regions, the disease reduced yields in cultivated areas by an average of 51%.
How Does Roasting Affect Wheat Crop?
Wheat scorch disease is spread through infected seeds, crop residues, and spores that can travel long distances through the air.
Rottenness is seen irregularly on wheat, it develops rapidly on the plant and this development cycle cannot be controlled. The irregularity of outbreaks also makes it difficult to understand and predict the exact conditions for disease development or to methodologically select resistant wheat lines.
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For disease, heat and humidity must be in certain proportions simultaneously. The disease is therefore limited to areas with these conditions. However, it is also known that the fungus adapts to new conditions by mutating.
There are no widely available resistant cultivars for wheat roast. Fungicides are expensive and provide only a partial defense. Also, they are often difficult to use in areas where burns occur, and they must be applied long before any symptoms appear. Therefore, fungicides are a costly expense for many farmers.
The fungus Magnaporthe oryzae is physiologically and genetically complex. Therefore, even after more than three decades, scientists do not fully understand how it interacts with wheat or which genes in wheat confer durable resistance.
Researchers from the International Corn and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) are partnering with national researchers and meteorological agencies on ways to work towards solutions to reduce the threat of wheat blight and increase the resilience of smallholder farmers in the region.
Through the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) and Climate Services for Resilient Development (CSRD) projects supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the International Corn and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and its partners are helping farmers reduce the impact of wheat blight. develops agricultural methods and early warning systems.
(Note: Since no academic study has been found in the Turkish of the disease, which is known as Wheat Blast, it has been produced in Turkish by the editor as Wheat Scorching Disease. While the word Blight in Wheat Head Blight, which is translated into Turkish as Wheat Head Blight, can be used as "whitening, burning", the word "Blast" It can be used as roasting as a result of spreading after explosion.)
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Çeviri: Hasan ÇELEN