In early stages, the blight shows up as a dark-red elongated spot or lesion on the leaf. As it progresses, the lesion gets larger and turns tan colored in the center with a dark-red to purple margin. In more advanced cases, these lesions cover much of the leaf surface of older leaves and entire leaves will senesce. In very severe cases, the entire leaf canopy is affected and can result in the loss of most green color in the leaf tissue. In these severe cases, the effects of the blight appear to the casual observer to be symptomatic of a severe drought.
Symptoms are equally prevalent on seedling and mature plants.
Common buffelgrass may be somewhat more susceptible than Nueces, but Nueces is by no means resistant. We do not know at this time if this disease will affect yield as dramatically next year or not, but the likely scenario is that it will. Unfortunately, we do not have an alternate buffelgrass cultivar at this time. Kleingrass can be planted in parts of the buffelgrass region, but it will not be a good substitute in the drier regions with sandy soils.