Objective:
Develop disease and mycotoxin prediction models that help farmers and their advisors with the management of FHB.

Approach:
Develop a DON module for the current disease models that will help meet the immediate needs of the U.S. Wheat and Barley Industries; intiate the mechanistic modeling effort by investigating the influence of environment on the probability of infection and DON accumulation in a field environment; and improve the pre-harvest estimates of DON based on visual assessments of disease by examing the relationship between DON and wheat spikes with different levels of disease severity. Combining existing data resources with new information collected in replicated field trials will allow initiation of a new mechanistic modeling effort that could possibly improve the accuracy of the disease/DON prediction models.