Yield reduction from BYDV

13 January 1999

Yield reduction from BYDV

Question

HERE in New Zealand we had a mild winter and aphid flights are early
(before the usual weed spray and insecticide) and much spring sown
barley has been struck with yellow dwarf virus. Typically, can you tell
me what sort of yield reduction results from average BYDV attacks, and
whether this would be offset by increased nitrogen use?

Response

Jon Oakley, ADAS Bridgets

Answer

ITS difficult to give a definitive answer to this question as we cant
control BYDV on spring barley with insecticides.

Hence we dont have yield
responses to work from as with winter cereals, where a response range
of 1-2.5 t/ha is normal with significant attacks.

With spring barley
in the UK, nearly all the damage is done by alate (winged) aphid-vected
BYDV giving a very dispersed and even distribution of virus compared
to the typical patches in winter cereals.

From transmission studies we
know that, depending on when the plant is infected, the yield loss drops
from 100% at the one-leaf stage to zero at the start of stem-extension
(GS 31). The worst cases are in late-sown cereals infected early after
emergence, and I have known some total write-offs in such cases.

Earlier infections resulting in yield loss are likely to show as
yellowing of more than one leaf. Later infection resulting in little
yield loss can show as a yellow tipping of the flag leaf.

Some
varieties of spring barley are more tolerant to certain strains of the
virus, and we know of a gene (YD2) which is resistant to the PAV strain
of BYDV and has been tried in the UK, but is not present in any
currently grown varieties.

We dont have any evidence of nitrogen affecting loss, if levels were
sub-optimal extra, it could help uninfected plants to compensate for
damage if the infected plants were badly damaged and stunted.