Tucked away in a corner of the Central Maryland Research and Education Center’s Beltsville facility, several dozen small grains varieties are about to be put to the test under harsh disease conditions.
In about two weeks, researchers at the University of Delaware and University of Maryland will sprinkle disease-laden corn kernels on tiny plots of wheat and barley at the Central Maryland Research and Education Center hoping for infection of Fusarium head blight or scab, which has hampered small grains in the Mid-Atlantic in recent years.
Along with the infected corn as inoculum, the “misted scab nursery” is outfitted with irrigation to spray a fine mist overhead to give the disease an even better chance to proliferate.
“Basically it’s a worse case scenario,” said Dr. Jason Wight, field and variety trials coordinator for the University of Maryland. “We try to replicate what a farmer might do in the field up until the high amount of disease pressure. The uniqueness of this is having all these varieties in one place stacked against each other head to head.”
