 For xerium headlight, there's our most important head disease of small grains in North Dakota and Minnesota. When scouting for this disease in a headed crop, there are a few key features to differentiate for xerium headlight. The first thing is you'll notice is premature whitening or bleaching of the spike. Sometimes it's only a single floret, or it can be the entire head. Regardless, this is a symptom that you may start seeing 10 to 14 days after flowering has been initiated. When it comes to looking for symptoms in barley, you can notice premature bleaching of the spike lids, but often infection first occurs as small brown water-soaked lesions that continue to colonize a barley kernel. When you take the combination of these infections, the biggest result in this is you'll see shrunken kernel size, which can lead to yield loss. In the top photo here, we have Durham that has been characterized by infection from least severe to most severe in barley on the bottom. You'll notice that as the infection becomes severe, in this case an earlier infection on the head, you'll have reduced kernel size. This will lead to yield loss and discounts due to the production of the vomitoxin, production of vomitoxin known as deoxyneavalanol, that is a product of the phraserium fungus. When it comes to determining the amount of risk in your field from phraserium headlight, there are three things you can consider. Pathogen and probably the most important is environment. This disease is favored by high humidity and prolonged periods of moisture prior to and during the heading and flowering process. The optimal temperature is a range of 75 to 85 degrees, but disease can still occur outside of this range if ample moisture is present. The pathogen is a very good survivor in North Dakota and Minnesota. It uses several strategies and some of its preferred hosts are corn residue as well as small grain residue. The susceptible hosts that are associated with phraserium headlight include all small grains, but the level of susceptibility seems to be the most in the Durham crop where most of our resistance is in hard red spring wheat. When it comes to gauge and risk, there are some tools out there to help make that decision. There are forecasting models, one being available as the national model through funding from the U.S. Wheat and Barley Scab Initiative, and you have local state models such as one that's at NDSU and also at the one at the University of Minnesota. When it comes to management of disease, it uses a multi-pron approach, and this is going to include variety resistance, fungicide choice and timing, cultural practices and best used in an integrated manner. When it comes to looking at variety resistance, there are some great resources out there through continual breeding efforts and evaluation efforts in the breeding programs at both North Dakota and Minnesota. You can find these easily accessible each year by typing in the crop of choice and looking for specific trial results and evaluations of the diseases that you find in each manual. When it comes to fungicide, the first thing is making sure you're using the right fungicide. The best way to describe efficacy of fungicide can be found through the NCERA 184 table that is available at the Crop Protection Network website. Here it lists the five fungicides that are currently recommended for phrasarium headlight control, but notice that you're going to see efficacy differences amongst them. Generally over the years, triazole fungicides was our only class of fungicides for control, but recently a new SDHI that has come on the market has now also provided good control. When looking at these products specifically, Kurumba, Miravisace, Proline and Prasaril are going to offer the most protection against phrasarium headlight. When it comes to timing to make a fungicide application, it's going to differ slightly between wheat and barley. For wheat, you're going to look for the onset of flowering, which are the yellow anthers or yellow flowers protruding from the center of the head. When it comes to making the decision to make an application, research done by field trials in the US and Wheaton Barley Scab Initiative have shown that the window of efficacy starts at early flowering and is good for seven days. In other words, if you can't get out there to make a fungicide application on early flowering, you have up to seven days to make that application. When it comes to barley, our target is going to be full head and complete full head emergence as sometimes that flag leaf can be a barrier when trying to get great fungicide coverage. Again, the same mentality holds true that the fungicide window for making an application in barley is at full head and extends up to about seven days. This will give you the most reduction in phrasarium headlight and also the vomitoxin, deoxanabalanol. When it becomes looking at cultural practices, these can have some success when reducing infield inoculum. Certainly, rotations away from its preferred host crop of corn is one example where you can employ crop rotation to help reduce the risk in a field from phrasarium headlight. But the best way to manage this disease to reduce the amount of damage it causes in the field is used to an integrated approach. Oftentimes, this is done first by selecting the best available variety for resistance and using a fungicide application during the season. The combination of these events, you can show ways to help reduce this disease and help reduce potential concerns with it for that season. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me. My name is Andrew Friskup. I'm an extension plant pathologist at NDSU or I encourage you to reach out to your local extension county agent or county educator to help with some of the decisions that may be coming with phrasarium headlight.