The current warm to hot temperatures will considerably slow down stripe rust development, but favor leaf rust whose development has increased over the last three weeks.

There was severe leaf rust on wheat (Figure 1) and barley (Figure 2) during inspection of research plots at the Agricultural Research and Development Center (ARDC) near Mead (Saunders County) on June 2 and June 9.  By June 9, most leaves in unsprayed plots were dead or dying due to leaf rust (Figure 3). Other diseases observed were bacterial streak (Figure 4), black chaff (Figure 5), and Fusarium head blight (Figure 6). At this time it is too late to manage any of these diseases due to the advanced growth stage of wheat.