This publication provides a useful guide for identifying, understanding and managing the disease. This article highlights some of the key points in the bulletin and current research efforts. Life Cycle Cephalosporium stripe is a soilborne fungal disease of winter wheat, winter barley and other winter cereals and grasses. Soil freezing and frost-heaving cause the most common root injuries through which infection takes place. This is one of the reasons the disease level often fluctuates sharply from year to year, depending on the winter and early spring weather.
Infected tillers die prematurely and set little or no seed.
If seed is produced, it usually is shriveled and light in test weight, much of which can be lost through the combine at harvest. Yield losses can be high. In years of severe infestation, as in 1984, yield reductions up to 75 percent or more were reported in the region. Murray estimates that for every 1 percent of the tillers with the stripes in the flag leaf, there is about 0.8 percent yield loss. In conducive years, infection rates of 40 to 60 percent are common.