Losses due to stripe rust caused by Puccinia striiformis in different varieties of wheat

Abstract

Stripe rust caused by P. striiformis Westend f.sp. tritici Eriks. is an important and most damaging disease of wheat which is appearing continuously since 2006-07 in sub-mountainous districts of Punjab and Haryana. During 2008-09, wide spread occurrence of stripe rust was observed in sub-mountainous districts of Punjab on widely cultivated wheat variety, PBW 343 and the disease was as high as 60S-80S which resulted in drastic reduction of yield. With reappearance of rust in North West Plain zone of India, it became urgent need to assess losses due to stripe rust and to make strategy for the efficient management of this disease until and unless new resistant material of wheat having some different gene pool is developed. Therefore, an experiment was conducted to find out exact losses due to stripe rust in different cultivars of wheat having different level of resistance. Efforts have also been made to calculate it on the basis of rust severity, area under cultivation of wheat and yield of five most affected sub-mountainous districts of Punjab. The impact of spray of propiconazole @0.1 per cent (Tilt 25 EC) on management of disease and yield in affected areas was also studied.