Getting Information into Farmers Hands about Wheat Stripe Rust.

Stripe rust can be a devastating disease to wheat yields in northwest Kansas.  Therefore, it is important to get information about the disease and its control to farmers.  This has been an ongoing effort of K-State agronomy and plant pathology and has especially been increased over the last two years with increased stripe rust pressure.  In northwest Kansas, special attention has been paid to get current information to farmers quickly.  This is done in a number of ways that include personal emails, field visits, facebook, twitter, a website and ‘Save the Flag Leaf’ field days and producer meetings.  In one 3-meeting series of ‘Save the Flag Leaf’ meetings, nearly 120 producers and agronomy professionals learned about applying fungicides for controlling stripe rust.  In addition, a new fact sheet was developed to aid with the identification of stripe rust in the early stages of development.  In evaluations, producers said they utilized the fact sheet to identify early stages of stripe rust infections and were more able to make an educated decisions on fungicide applications for stripe rust.