Yellow barley in wheat

Yellow dwarf barley virus dwarfs wheat too. A recent chat with University of Idaho Pathologist, Juliet Marshall summarized symptoms of yellow dwarf barley disease. “The earlier the infection, the greater the damage in the field. It is called barley yellow dwarf virus because it looks yellow in both wheat and barley. There is a yellow flagging on the leaf tip and it runs down towards the stem. It leaves half of the leaf green at the tip is yellow, sometimes that tip goes to a red color. It causes some dwarfing in the plant and sometimes the dwarfing is so severe that the plant never does anything. So the leaves are dwarfed, the upper part of the plant is dwarfed, the roots are also going to be dwarfed so it will be more difficult for the plant to take up nutrients and water. It can actually cause an increase in the winter damage and winter kill, it will decrease the ability of the plant to survive the winter and will also decrease the ability of the plant to survive any stresses. It will definitely decrease your yield. We are looking at a conservative estimate of a 20 to 30% yield loss and potentially greater because we are so short on water. The plant can recover somewhat if we have enough irrigation and nitrogen applied to the plant.