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Control Recommendations Management Practices
Pesticides
Loose smut is most obvious just after the wheat has headed. Diseased plants produce blackened heads among a field of green heads. The spikelets of colonized heads become a mass of olive-black spores that have a characteristic "dead fish" odor. The fungus that causes loose smut survives as dormant mycelia (fungal threads) within the embryo of an infested wheat seed. When the seed germinates, the fungus resumes growth along with the wheat shoot apex. As the juvenile wheat head develops within the wheat stem the fungus colonizes the head develops within the wheat stem the fungus colonizes the seed primordia (tissue that would become a seed within a wheat head). When the head emerges from the boot, instead of flowering and releasing pollen, it releases the olive-black spores that can be wind-blown to "healthy" flowering wheat heads. The spore germinates on the stigma (female receptive portion of wheat flower) of a healthy wheat head and colonizes the developing wheat seed embryo. The colonized seed appears healthy but carries the dormant smut fungus within to start the cycle over again with the planting of the seed.
| Disease Management Practices | Foliar Diseases | Seed and Seedling Diseases | Root and Crown Diseases | Head Diseases | Virus Diseases |
