Wheat Planting Considerations for Insects & Diseases

• Decisions made before planting wheat are critical for effective season-long pest control.
• Variety selection should balance the factors required to meet overall cropping system objectives.
• The Hessian Fly-free planting date and other cultural factors remain very important.
• Seed treatments provide additional protection in high pressure environments.

Decisions made before planting wheat can have a large impact on the success of the season-long pest management program. Perhaps the most important pre-season decision with any crop is variety selection. Wheat varieties vary significantly in yield potential, agronomics, and defensive traits. Varieties must be selected with consideration for the overall objectives of the cropping system – e.g. top end yield may be compromised for an earlier maturing variety that facilitates double-crop soybeans and offers a better disease package. By contrast, full-season top yielding varieties may compromise disease tolerance traits, requiring additional crop protection inputs. 

Variety selection

Obviously the first trait that you are looking for is yield. The second trait you should look for is resistance to Fusarium Head Blight (FHB). This is the most destructive disease encountered across wheat production systems in North America, and results in reduced yields in addition to mycotoxin (deoxynivalenol-DON) contamination of grains, requiring additional cleaning and potentially blending by elevators. Resistant wheat cultivars reduce the colonization rate and degree of spread in wheat heads and reduce DON contamination.  This is important as healthy-looking kernels can contain elevated DON and these kernels cannot be removed from high quality grain. Our modern wheat cultivars have much greater resistance to FHB than those released 5-10 years ago. In addition, most of these cultivars do not come with a yield penalty as they did in the past. 

Other diseases that may not be as devastating but more commonly occurring in wheat production should be next on your list of variety traits to look for. These diseases include Septoria Leaf Blotch, Stagonospora Leaf and Glume Blotch, Powdery Mildew (especially in high nitrogen management systems and manured fields) and Stripe Rust. Stripe Rust is typically a concern if it blows into wheat production regions and conditions remain very cool and wet. Keep in mind what traits your varieties have so you can determine what diseases to look out for during the season.