Free Whitehead Diagnostic Guide Published

May 2003 - An ease-to-use guide card has been published this season to help UK agronomists and growers pinpoint the cause of whiteheads in their wheat crops.

The Latitude Guide to Root and Stem-based Disease Identification gives a practical step-by-step checklist to telling the difference between whiteheads caused by take-all, eyespot, sharp eyespot and fusarium infections. It does so through a series of simple questions supported by colour pictures.

Also included on the card is a field guide to take-all risk assessment, allowing users to assess the vulnerability of their crops on the basis of the major risk factors of rotation, climate, sowing date and soil type.

"Because they’re caused by a range of root and stem-based disease infections as well as drought stress, whiteheads alone shouldn’t be used to diagnose take-all," stressed Latitude manager, Geoff Hall. "Instead the roots and stems of a selection of plants need to be examined carefully for characteristic signs of infection, ideally around flowering.

"Our new guide card is designed to help agronomists and growers establish exactly what is causing any whitehead problems so they can target preventative measures as cost-effectively as possible.

"To help them decide the extent to which our specialist seed treatment is likely to be of value in the coming season, we’ve included a simple take-all risk assessment checklist with the guide," he added.

"The highly variable nature of the disease and the fact that severe losses can be incurred even in the absence of whiteheads makes it important to base treatment decisions on risk assessment rather than merely past experience or field observations."

Copies of the Latitude guide can be obtained free of charge from Nellie Boswell at Monsanto (01223 849341) or through www.monsanto-ag.co.uk. The company also operates a root analysis laboratory for agronomists to establish specific levels of take-all and other infections, and offers a specialist farm risk assessment service through trained distributor staff across the UK.