Prevalence and management of brown rust of wheat in Central India

Abstract

Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is an important grain and fodder crop and it was cultivated in all over the worldand consumed by two billion people which is the 36% of the total world population.Its production is adversely affected by several foliar diseases among them brown rust is a major problem of the wheat growing areas. Under favorable conditions, brown rust may cause maximum yield losses in susceptible varieties. In our survey, there was 0 to 40S disease severity were recorded in Maharashtra both surveyed years and 0 to 40S and 0 to 20S disease severity was recorded in Madhya Pradesh in 2021-22 and 2022-23 respectively. These variations found due to meteorological changes and adoption of different wheat varieties in those areas by farmers. Total phenol synthesizing capacity differs from variety to variety but in case of resistant varieties total phenol increases substantially even after 60 days of infection until last observation. Similar in case of moderately resistant as well butin susceptible varieties this trend was decreased after 60 days. Biochemical changes in different 30 wheat varieties were observed with respect to Chlorophyll a, Chlorophyll b and total Chlorophyll content. The Chlorophyll a, Chlorophyll b and total Chlorophyll concentration were decreased after infection in all the group of varieties and but before inoculation of pathogen it was found in higher concentration. Under screening trial out of 300 germplasms, 32 entries exhibited no disease, hence grouped as Immune. Resistant germplasm was24 reported to have trace infection in initial stage but later on there was no disease progress recorded. At the same time 80entries showed moderately resistant and 77 entries were grouped as moderately susceptible while87 germplasms have been grouped as susceptible as their AUDPC values exceed gt500. The performance of fungicide Tebuconazole+trifloxystrobin was found best in all parameters tested. It reduces maximum ACI values and highestbiological yield, grain yield and thousand grain weight. The performance of next best fungicide was Azoxystrobin+tebuconazole. Among the tested botanicals neem was gave best result than other tested botanicals. newline