Welcome to the wheat and barley heading and flowering season, Maryland! This is the first FHB risk forecast for this season from me, and I will continue to provide you with regular commentaries over the next 6-7 weeks. Wheat is some weeks away from flowering, but barley is starting/ will soon start to head, especially in the Eastern shore of the state. Right now, the risk map (below) is showing moderate FHB risk, however, this may change with the predicted rain over this weekend. So, if you have planted barley, keep monitoring closely for the FHB risk over the next couple of weeks. If your barley is starting to head, you might consider applying fungicides on it. If you are still some weeks away from your barley heading, keep monitoring for the risk. Unfortunately, for barley, there are no FHB-resistant varieties available so far. Remember, the best stage for applying FHB fungicides on barley is when the heads are completely out of the boots. The FHB fungicides are triazole-containing products (Miravis-Ace, Prosaro, Prosaro-Pro, Sphaerex). Do not apply strobilurin-containing fungicides. Wheat is continuing to tiller/ joint currently and is not at a stage susceptible to FHB susceptible right now. I observed some tip burn in our field plots at the Wye, which may be due to freeze-damage by the sudden dip in temperature last week.

--Nidhi Rawat, Small Grains Pathologist, University of Maryland