## 2 Fusarium Head Blight (FHB)
### FHB in Canada  
The history of wheat cultivation and FHB in Canada is not as extensive as that of its neighbour America. The first grain of wheat was sown in Canada in the year 1541 and it would take a little over 200 years before wheat cultivation became an established crop in Canada [58]. Nevertheless, Canada has seen and experienced devastating losses and a steady increase in FHB incidence and outbreaks over the last decades. Fortunately, knowledge and records of the USA's history of FHB and the relatively short cultivation history of wheat in Canada has allowed for up-to-date documentation of FHB incidence and outbreak in wheat, durum and other cereal crops. In a 2003 article \"History of Fusarium Head Blight with an emphasis in North America\", [PERSON] mentions that the FHB epidemic of 1919 in America extended to the Canadian prairie provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan as reported in the Cereal Crop Disease Report by [PERSON] from University of Saskatchewan [33]. However, numerous articles including the Canadian Grain Commission (CGC) and the Canadian Phytopathological Society (1923), recorded that _F. graminearum_, the main aetiological agent in most FHB cases, was first registered on corn stubble in Manitoba [58]. Since then, _F. graminearum_ and other pathogenic _Fusarium_ species have been isolated from diseased cereal crops, including wheat and barley. While the disease in Canadian grains has not been as devastating as it has been in America, moderate widespread FHB epidemics were reported once every 9 years in Southwestern Ontario from 1927 to 1980 [26; 42]. Losses to the Canadian grain industry during the 1990s totaled US $200 million for Ontario and Quebec and US $300 million for Manitoba [50]. In addition to the huge economic cost, the wheat industry over the last decades has witnessed a shift and spread of FHB from East Canada to the Canadian prairie provinces, the main producers of common wheat and durum wheat in Canada. Accompanying this shift and spread of FHB is a steady increase in mycotoxicigenic _Fusarium_ pathogens that have spread from the Southeastern Manitoba across to Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia over the last few decades [59; 60; 61]. Figure 2 gives a brief outline of the major FHB epidemic years in Canada and the numbers of scientific papers that referenced FHB epidemics over a 35-year period from 1985 to 2020 as shown in data retrieved from the Web of Science Database (WSD, 2021). The increase or decrease in the production of scientific papers on FHB epidemics in Canada can be divided into three phases, (i) 1985-1997, the slow growth phase, (ii) 1997-2007, the exponential growth phase, and (iii) 2008-2016, the extensive growth phase, (Figure 2). Figure 2: FHB progression and history in Canada as reflected in scientific papers from the year 1985–2020 found on the Web of Science database-WSD, (i) phase 1—slow growth years 1985–1996, (ii)—exponential growth years 1991–2007, and (iii)—extensive growth years 2008–2016. Phase 1, from 1985-1997, corresponds to the slow growth of the output of information on FHB disease in crops in Canada. During this time FHB woes were mostly seen and experienced in Ontario and in Manitoba, with a stand-out epidemic of the 1990s that would for the first time in a decade remind cereal farmers of the dreadful nature of this disease. Over 20 million bushels of wheat was lost in Manitoba in the year 1993 [28]. Compounding this great loss was the unfortunate reality that FHB was now slowly but strongly moving from the East to the West across Canada, first to the neighbouring province of Saskatchewan. Even though this was the early stages of FHB in Canada, all this would quickly change as FHB moved into the exponential growth phase over the next decade from 1997-2007. The exponential growth, identified as phase 2, of FHB across the prairies was mostly seen in the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta.