Pacific Northwest 1998 An Online Guide to Plant Disease Control

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OSU Extension Office
 
Wheat (Triticum aestivum) -- Take-all
See Also: Wheat -- Common Root Rot ; and Wheat -- Crown Rot (Foot Rot, Seedling Blight, Dryland Root
 
Cause: A fungus, Gaeumannomyces graminis var. tritici, which lives in soil or diseased cereal and grass stubble and straw. Damage is severe in western Oregon and Washington and in irrigated areas of central and eastern Oregon. It also can be serious in extreme northern Idaho and throughout the irrigated Snake River Plains. The disease is mild in most nonirrigated fields in low rainfall areas but causes economic damage only with annual cereal production or in years of above-average rain on fields with high-residue tillage practices. Liming increases disease incidence.
Symptoms: The stem's base is covered with a coal-black fungal growth under leaf sheaths. Individual roots turn coal black and are coal black on the interior when scraped. Plants are stunted, mature early, and have white, empty heads. Some tillers may fail to head.

Note the discolored and rotted roots.

Healthy plants are on the right.

 
Cultural control:

  1. Maintain good nitrogen levels. Using ammonia forms of nitrogen and chloride fertilizers reportedly lessen damage.
  2. Do not plant wheat after legume crops that were heavily infested with cheatgrass.
  3. Avoid planting wheat after wheat unless long-term monoculture is planned.
Chemical control: Seed treatment with Dividend or Baytan is only partially effective.
References:
  1. Christensen, N.W., and J.M. Hart. 1993. Combating Take-all Root Rot of Winter Wheat in Western Oregon. Publication EC 1423. Oregon State University Extension Service.
Content edited by: Richard Smiley and Cynthia M. Ocamb on January 1, 2009
 
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