Description:
A big component of production stability is the management of major impacting diseases in ways that are cost effective and environmentally informed based on host, pathogen and climatic knowledge. With increasing disease pressure due to changing pathogen virulence, climatic conditions and farming systems, opportunity exists to develop robust decision support tools to enable growers to make informed, timely disease management decisions that are economically viable.
This project builds on the successes of previous investments and continues to deliver improved decision making for management of key foliar fungal diseases in cereal, oilseed, and pulse crops.
Through the production and delivery of management tools and targeted risk information, Australian grain growers can reduce the manageable impact of fungal diseases resulting in improved profitability and decreased financial risk. The accuracy of these tools and information will be ensured through detailed epidemiology and collaborative testing performed across Australia.
This national project, funded by the GRDC and led by DPIRD, conducts detailed epidemiology, disease management and validation experiments in all relevant grain growing regions targeting yellow leaf spot and stripe rust of wheat, net blotches of barley, Sclerotinia and blackleg upper canopy infection of canola, Ascochyta blight of chickpea and chocolate spot of faba bean.
The project maintains and further develops existing management decision tools and products for blackleg and Sclerotinia of canola, stripe rust and yellow spot of wheat, powdery mildew of mungbean, and blackspot of field pea.
New management decision tools will be released for upper canopy blackleg of canola and net blotches of barley, as well as the development and testing of prototype decision tools and modelling frameworks for further high priority diseases, including Ascochyta blight in chickpea, chocolate spot of faba bean and Sclerotinia of lupin.
Lastly, the project pioneers the delivery of decision tools through commercial third-party platforms so that decision support for disease management can occur as part of routine crop management processes.
Funding source:
GRDC
Project code:
DAW2112-002RTX