Yellow ear rot/Tundu disease of wheat

C/O: Anguina tritici + clavibacter tritici

• Tundu disease is often known by names like “yellow ear rot of wheat”, “tundu disease of wheat”, “bacterial rot of wheat ears”, “bacterial spike blight”, and “yellow slime disease”.

Symptoms:

• At flowering stage.
• Twisting of the stem, distortion of the earhead and rooting of the spikelets with a profuse oozing liquid from the affected tissues. Hence, the name of the disease is yellow ear rot. The ooze contains masses of bacterial cells.
• The infected plants are shorter and thicker than the healthy plants. In the distorted earheads, dark galls are found in place of kernels.
• The infected plants produce more tillers than do the healthy one.
• No grain formation.
• Ear head may not emerge from boot leaf.

Etiology:

• Clavibacter which is belong to actinomycetes group of bacteria.
• Rod-shaped, motile with one polar flagellum, Gram- positive.

Favorable condition:

• Cool and moist climate is especially favorable for the development of this nematode.
• A film of moisture must be present when the young wheat plants are developing; otherwise, the very active larval nematodes cannot travel from the soil to the growing point of the seedling.

Survive and spread:

• Survive: contaminated seed, infected seed acts as a primary inoculum.
• Spread: yellow ooze cause secondary infection and transfer by wind and Rain.

Management:

• Sow gall free
• Separate the galls from the seed by floating in brine at 160 g of sodium chloride in liter of
• Wheat, barley or oat should not be sown in the infested
• Spray the crop with streptocycline, 1g in 10 liters of water.