Welcome to the Cereal Disease Encyclopaedia

The need to deliver consistent, high yields of high quality grain makes control of cereal diseases an important component of successful crop management. Recognition of the disease, and an understanding of the pathogen(s) responsible, is the first step in successful disease control. The Encyclopaedia was created to help the grower, adviser and others involved in cereal production recognise diseases and learn something about them.

Symptoms of both common and less frequently found diseases are illustrated and described, together with an outline of the disease cycle of the pathogen and an indication of the importance of the disease. The Encyclopaedia is not intended to be a guide to disease control, although some cultural control is included. Further information on control is readily available elsewhere, for example the principles of wheat disease management can be found in the HGCA Wheat Disease Management Guide and current information on fungicide performance is published annually on the HGCA website. These and further information can be found in Reference Material.

The online Cereal Disease Encyclopaedia has been created as an interactive version of the hard copy; The Encyclopaedia of Cereal Diseases. The production of the hard copy was very much a team effort, bringing together Bill Clark of Broom's Barn Research Centre who wrote the text, with Rosie Bryson and Lindy Tonguç of BASF and Clare Kelly and myself from HGCA, who edited and formatted it. The original publication was funded by BASF and HGCA. This interactive version was put together by Caroline Nicholls and Adrian Duffy both from HGCA. We hope you find it interesting and informative.

Graham Jellis
Director of Research and Development, HGCA