The Past, Present, and Future of Barley Yellow Dwarf Management

Barley yellow dwarf (BYD) has been described as the most devastating cereal grain disease worldwide causing between 11% and 33% yield loss in wheat fields. There has been little focus on management of the disease in the literature over the past twenty years, although much of the United States still suffers disease outbreaks. With this review, we provide the most up-to-date information on BYD management used currently in the USA. After a brief summary of the ecology of BYD viruses, vectors, and plant hosts with respect to their impact on disease management, we discuss historical management techniques that include insecticide seed treatment, planting date alteration, and foliar insecticide sprays. We then report interviews with grain disease specialists who indicated that these techniques are still used today and have varying impacts. Interestingly, it was also found that many places around the world that used to be highly impacted by the disease; i.e. the United Kingdom, Italy, and Australia, no longer consider the disease a problem due to the wide adoption of the aforementioned management techniques. Finally, we discuss the potential of using BYD and aphid population models in the literature, in combination with web-based decision-support systems, to correctly time management techniques.