Fusarium head blight in wheat: Impact of tillage and other agronomic practices under natural infection

Fusarium head blight (FHB) is a destructive disease of the world's wheat-growing areas. In Argentina, the area under reduced tillage has increased due to soil erosion that threatened productivity. The effect of conventional and no tillage systems oil FHB combined with other agronomic practices such as nitrogen fertilization, and the influence of the environmental conditions was analysed Under natural infection oil different cultivars. Wheat trials were conducted in three consecutive years: maize was the previous crop in the first and wheat the previous Crop in the Subsequent two years of the study. The experimental design was a split plot, with tillage treatments (conventional tillage and no-till) as the main plots. Fertilizer treatments were applied as a range of urea concentrations. Fusarium head blight was observed in all three experimental years. Differences of disease expression among trials were associated with the environmental factors prevailing during the experiments. In the first year, with moderate weather conditions, the only interactions for FHB incidence were between no-till and Urea split doses. Seedling emergence, seed health, thousand kernel weight and deoxynivalenol (DON) concentration did not differ Suggesting that the fertilizers and genotypes did not affect disease susceptibility. Climatic conditions prevailing in the second year were more conducive to disease development and severe FHB infection was observed. Tillage and fertilization treatments did not affect the variables analysed. Only cultivars showed significant differences and DON Values were high. In the third year, unfavourable conditions for disease development resulted in low disease levels and no effect or interaction among variables was observed. The results obtained would suggest that favourable weather conditions are likely to be more important than tillage practice and fertilizer treatments. Since soil conservation practices have been widely adopted in most areas of Argentina, an integrated used of all the available strategies should be considered to decrease FHB damage. (c) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.