Grain Harvesting Strategies to Minimize Grain Quality Losses Due to Fusarium Head Blight in Wheat

Abstract Fusarium head blight (FHB) reduces wheat grain yield and quality, leading to price discounts due to Fusarium-damaged kernels (FDK), deoxynivalenol (DON) contamination of grain, and reduced test weight (weight per unit volume of grain). Experiments were conducted to determine whether changing combine harvester configurations to differentially remove diseased kernels affected the yield and quality of grain harvested from plots with different mean levels of FHB index (IND, mean proportion of diseased spikelets per spike), achieved with inoculations at different spore densities. Plots were harvested using four combine configurations, with C1 being the standard, set at a fan speed of 1,375 rpm and a shutter opening of 70 mm, and C2, C3, and C4 regulated to fan speeds and shutter openings of 1,475 rpm and 70 mm, 1,475 rpm and 90 mm, and 1,375 rpm and 90 mm, respectively. C3 and C4 consistently had significantly lower mean arcsine-transformed FDK and log-transformed DON and higher mean test weight than ...