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Tips to protect your crops from ‘yellow death’

Dec 07, 2017

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Experts share how farmers can prevent stripe rust damage in wheat

By Kaitlynn Anderson

Staff Reporter

Farms.com

Ontario wheat growers can implement many strategies to reduce the detrimental effects of stripe rust on yields.

The disease can be so harmful that is often referred to as “yellow death” in the United Kingdom, Dr. David Hooker, a field crop agronomist and assistant professor at the University of Guelph’s Ridgetown campus, told Farms.com today.

And stripe rust is most likely to develop under certain growing conditions.

The likelihood of wheat crops contracting the infection increases when the disease is present in the southern United States and when Ontario experiences moist conditions or frequent, heavy dews, according to Dr. Hooker.

“Stripe rust has primarily been a cool season disease that is not active above 77 F (25 C), but there is recent evidence that the pathogen is evolving to warmer temperatures,” he said. “This puts the entire province at a higher risk, and extends the window of infection and disease development later into the season.”

Producers can take a few steps to protect their crop from stripe rust.

“The best defence against stripe rust is a combination of variety selection, scouting and timely fungicide applications,” Joanna Follings, a cereals specialist with OMAFRA, wrote in a Field Crop News article yesterday.

When selecting wheat varieties, farmers may want to pay attention to the ratings on stripe rust susceptibility.

A variety with a rating of six or higher “is susceptible to stripe rust and will benefit from a fungicide application if (the disease) is present,” said Follings.

Moderately resistant varieties hold a rating between three and five, and should be scouted on a regular basis. Farmers growing these varieties may want to consider a fungicide application if stripe rust appears to be challenging the upper leaves of the canopy – especially if the crop is at the flag leaf stage, she added.

A rating of two or lower “indicates that the variety is resistant against stripe rust and will (not likely) benefit from an early season fungicide application.”

In addition to choosing a suitable variety, growers may want to scout their fields consistently to ensure early detection of stripe rust.

“Regular scouting assists in determining if fungal disease infection is progressing up the plant,” said Follings. This step “is critical in determining if a fungicide application is needed, and at what timing.”

For more information on stripe rust, growers can read the Farms.com online field guide.

Photo: OMAFRA

Video: Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

In a world of PowerPoint overload, Rex Bernardo stands out. No bullet points. No charts. No jargon. Just stories and photographs. At this year’s National Association for Plant Breeding conference on the Big Island of Hawaii, he stood before a room of peers — all experts in the science of seeds — and did something radical: he showed them images. He told them stories. And he asked them to remember not what they saw, but how they felt.

Bernardo, recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award, has spent his career searching for the genetic treasures tucked inside what plant breeders call exotic germplasm — ancient, often wild genetic lines that hold secrets to resilience, taste, and traits we've forgotten to value.

But Bernardo didn’t always think this way.

“I worked in private industry for nearly a decade,” he recalls. “I remember one breeder saying, ‘We’re making new hybrids, but they’re basically the same genetics.’ That stuck with me. Where is the new diversity going to come from?”

For Bernardo, part of the answer lies in the world’s gene banks — vast vaults of seed samples collected from every corner of the globe. Yet, he says, many of these vaults have quietly become “seed morgues.” “Something goes in, but it never comes out,” he explains. “We need to start treating these collections like living investments, not museums of dead potential.”

That potential — and the barriers to unlocking it — are deeply personal for Bernardo. He’s wrestled with international policies that prevent access to valuable lines (like North Korean corn) and with the slow, painstaking science of transferring useful traits from wild relatives into elite lines that farmers can actually grow. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But he’s convinced that success starts not in the lab, but in the way we communicate.

“The fact sheet model isn’t cutting it anymore,” he says. “We hand out a paper about a new variety and think that’s enough. But stories? Plants you can see and touch? That’s what stays with people.”

Bernardo practices what he preaches. At the University of Minnesota, he helped launch a student-led breeding program that’s working to adapt leafy African vegetables for the Twin Cities’ African diaspora. The goal? Culturally relevant crops that mature in Minnesota’s shorter growing season — and can be regrown year after year.

“That’s real impact,” he says. “Helping people grow food that’s meaningful to them, not just what's commercially viable.”

He’s also brewed plant breeding into something more relatable — literally. Coffee and beer have become unexpected tools in his mission to make science accessible. His undergraduate course on coffee, for instance, connects the dots between genetics, geography, and culture. “Everyone drinks coffee,” he says. “It’s a conversation starter. It’s a gateway into plant science.”