What will be covered?• What is Barley?– Powdery Mildew – Covered Smut– Loose Smut
• What is Millet? – Green ear or downy mildew – Grain smut – Ergot
• What is Maize?– Smut – Common Rust– Leaf Blight
Barley
• Barlay is a member of the grass family and a major cereal grain
• It is used as a component of various health foods, soups and stews, and in barley bread of various cultures
• Barley is cultivated on a small scale in Pakistan
Powdery Mildew
• Pathogen: Blumeria graminis• Symptoms:– can be found on leaves, stems and ears – white pustules appear eventually become
black spore (cleistothecia) towards the end of the season
Covered Smut Loose Smut
• Pathogen: Ustilago hordei• Symptoms:
– Ear emergence – In which ears seem to be
normal but grains appear to be covered in a thin membrane
– Grains have been replaced by masses of black spores
– Membrane is easily ruptured and as spores are released the symptoms become similar to those of loose smut
• Pathogen: Ustilago nuda • Symptoms– Ear emergence – Replaced by a mass of
black fungal spores– The spores are released as
soon as the ear emerges, leaving only the bare remains of the ear rachis
– Blackened ears are so obvious in the crop at ear emergence the disease appears to be very severe
Millet
• Grown under erratic distribution of annual rainfall, high mean temperature and depleted soil fertility
• These are currently the fourth cereal in Pakistan
• It is mostly confined to the desert and mountain (Thar-Cholistan and Kohistan) area
Green ear or downy mildew
• Pathogen: Sclerospora graminicola• Symptoms: – Ear formation stage– Leaves become distorted, twisted, crinkled and
lose their green colour, become white and later turn brown
– The ears are transformed in to green leafy structures with enlarged glumes, turning wholly or partially into loose heads
– The affected portions are sterile and they do not produce grains
Grain smut
• Pathogen: Tolyposporium penicillariae• Symptoms: – Infected grains are thickened, slightly elongated– Covered by tough and blackish green membrane
filled with fungal spores– These are present singly or in groups – Usually a one side of the ear or towards its base – Scattered or collected together in patches on the
ear
Ergot
• Pathogen: Claviceps purpurea• Symptoms:– The causal fungus only attacks the ear at
flowering, replacing the grain in a few spikelets by a hard, purple black sclerotium, known as an ergot
– Such ergots can be very large, up to 2cm in length
Maize
• Cultivated as multipurpose food and forage crop, generally by resource poor farmers using marginal land
• In Pakistan, it is the third most important cereal after wheat and rice
• An important crop in Pakistan in terms of its food for human, feed for poultry and fodder for livestock utilization and as a raw material for the industry
SMUT
• Pathogen: Ustilago maydis• Symptoms: – White to grayish-white galls (soft tumors) develop
on any part of the plant. – These galls are light coloured in early stages,
become blackish on maturity and filled with black powder
– Large sized galls involving the entire head
Rust
• Pathogen: Puccinia sorghi• Symptoms: – Recognized by small, elongate, powdery pustules
over both surfaces of the leaves – Pustules are dark brown in early stages of
infection; later, the epidermis is ruptured– Lesions turn black as the plant matures
Anthracnose leaf blight
• Pathogen: Colletotrichum graminicola• Symptoms: – The disease is present in warm, humid environments
with a foliar disease phase and a stalk rotting phase.– The most severe damage is caused by the stalk rot
phase. – Foliar damage can be observed at different stages of
plant development• In the early seedling stage, leaves show irregular, oval-to-
elongated lesions with characteristic yellow-to-reddish-brown margins
• In later stages of plant development, similar lesions can be observed in the upper leaves of infected plants, especially in those where stalk rot symptoms have already developed