Graduate student Katelyn Willyerd innoculates her wheat plots with Fusarium.
A Carbon dioxide sprayer is used to deliver the spore laden solution.
Captured graduate students?
Graduate students sit within the incubation chambers to hold them on the wagon during transportation to the field plots. Small chambers are sometimes used to further moderate the environmental conditions for some of the wheat inoculation studies.
Winter wheat plot in April.
Wheat planted in the fall at the Rock Springs farm will provide research plots the following spring/summer.
Winter wheat plots in May.
Cultivar differences between the various small plots are beginning to show. Wheat is approaching 'boot' stage when the wheat heads will emerge from the leaf sheath.
Winter wheat plots in late May.
The wheat heads have emerged on some plots and flowering has begun. It will soon be ready to inoculate the wheat.
Undergraduate Adam Blatt inspects the young wheat plots.
Wheat plots prepared for inoculation.
The wheat plots have had a water misting system installed to keep the plots moist after inoculation.
Misting the wheat plots during infection.
Intermittent water misting keeps the wheat plots moist during the fungal infection period.
Bleaching symptoms on wheat due to Fusarium Head Scab
Symptoms of Head Scab on early developing wheat cultivar.
Fusarium Head Scab symptoms on Wheat
Variations in symptom development on wheat.
Fusarium Head Scab symptoms on Wheat
Note the orange-colored areas of fungal sporulation on the outer wheat heads.
Fusarium Head Scab symptoms on Wheat
Wheat plots ready to harvest.
The symptoms of Fusarium Head Scab fade as the wheat ripens and bleaches. Color differences among the cultivars in the small plots are apparent.
Time to harvest...
Tim Grove drives the small plot combine, while undergraduate student Adam Blatt collects each plot yield separately.
Harvesting the small plots.
Undergraduate Adam Blatt watches to be certain all the of grain from each small plot is properly bagged and labeled.
Wheat rust late in the season.
Installing the incubation chambers.
Tim Grove gives a knot-tying lesson to show how the small chambers are tethered to stakes driven into the ground.
Gretchen Kuldau shows how it is done...
Dr. Kuldau takes the mallet to drive the stakes for the small plot incubation chambers.
Wheat head scab research in the Kuldau lab.
Dr. Kuldau & PhD student Katelyn Willyerd examine lodged wheat in one of the moving greenhouses at the research farm.
