A pictorial disease assessment scale for assessing wheat stripe rust at adult plant growth stage

Wheat plays an important role in world food security as it is consumed by 2.5 billion people to meet their dietary calories. Wheat stripe rust, also known as yellow rust, is a major constraint to global wheat production. The disease is best controlled via an integrated approach with genetic resistance at its core. A reliable and user-friendly disease assessment scale with good visual illustrations that enable collection of accurate high throughput phenotypic data for stripe rust response at adult plant growth stages is crucial for germplasm screening, characterisation of genes for rust resistance, mapping and genomic selection, pathogen survey, studying the yield impacts and fungicide research. Although several disease assessment scales for scoring wheat stripe rust are available, none is illustrated by high resolution, clear photographs of stripe rust symptoms. We have developed and report here a pictorial stripe rust assessment scale for reliable disease screening and phenotypic assessment.