Effects of wheat crop debris on the sporulation and survival of Pseudocercosporella herpotrichoides

Abstract

Three separate experiments showed that wheat tissue infected with the cereal eyespot fungus, Pseudocercosporella herpotrichoides, produced fewer spores in the presence of chopped wheat straw than when it was absent. This provides a possible explanation for earlier observations that there was often less eyespot in plots where straw had been incorporated than where it had been burnt. Sporulation on eyespot infected wheat tissue was not closely correlated with the viability of P. herpotrichoides, which could usually be isolated from infected tissue for some time after it had apparently lost the ability to produce spores. Many of the colonies that were isolated from such tissue also failed to sporulate under the conditions used but non sporulating colonies were less common amongst those isolated from tissue that had been mixed with chopped straw than from tissue that had not.