Environment
Loose smut is unique in that it needs to infect the seed in the previous growing season in order to be a pathogen of the plant in the current growing season. This means that regardless of environmental conditions, if an infected seed is planted as long as the growing conditions are good for the plant, they will be good for the fungus. However if there are environmental stressors on the plant such as drought or extreme heat, the plant will be more susceptible to injury because of the added stress from the fungal infection. If the plant doesn't survive to its reproductive stage, the fungus will not get to reproduce either.
Environment becomes a factor once teliospores have been produced and are ready for dispersal. In order to get to the open flowers of healthy plants, the teliospores must be moved by wind or rain or possibly insects. If dry, calm conditions persist for the entire time the flowers are open, the infection rate will be low. Wind and moderate rain, as well as cool temperatures (16-22 degrees Celsius) are ideal for the dispersal of spores. Conditions in Eastern Europe, Western Siberia, and the Northern Caucasus regions are some of the most conducive to loose smut.
Read more about this topic: Ustilago Nuda F.sp. Hordei
Famous quotes containing the word environment:
“People between twenty and forty are not sympathetic. The child has the capacity to do but it can’t know. It only knows when it is no longer able to do—after forty. Between twenty and forty the will of the child to do gets stronger, more dangerous, but it has not begun to learn to know yet. Since his capacity to do is forced into channels of evil through environment and pressures, man is strong before he is moral. The world’s anguish is caused by people between twenty and forty.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)
“Autonomy means women defining themselves and the values by which they will live, and beginning to think of institutional arrangements which will order their environment in line with their needs.... Autonomy means moving out from a world in which one is born to marginality, to a past without meaning, and a future determined by others—into a world in which one acts and chooses, aware of a meaningful past and free to shape one’s future.”
—Gerda Lerner (b. 1920)
“In a land which is fully settled, most men must accept their local environment or try to change it by political means; only the exceptionally gifted or adventurous can leave to seek his fortune elsewhere. In America, on the other hand, to move on and make a fresh start somewhere else is still the normal reaction to dissatisfaction and failure.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)