Contact information:
Laura Carsten Top: Laura Carsten
Research Associate Bottom: Wild Oats, her research project
Dept. of Plant Sciences
Montana State University
Bozeman, Montana 59717
(406)-994-1986
lcarsten@montana.edu
Research Projects:
Wild Oats:
Crown Rust: Biocontrol of Wild Oats
Smut: Biocontrol of Wild Oats
photo taken by Tina Iwen
The Talk of Wild Oats
We are talking oats here! While attending the filed trip to MSU, Laura Carsten informed us about Wild Oats.
Wild Oats are a problem world wide, in small grain crops. There are also found in the coastal areas of California. She looking for ways to develop oat smut into a control agent for this weed. Oat smut infects the seeds of oat plants. When infected plants make seed heads, the seeds are entirely replaced by smut (fungal) spores. Wild oats only live one year, so if they could infect all the wild oat seeds in a field, they would die without reproducing.
The research that Laura is working on is still in process. So far results have shown that, smut does not only replace the seeds of the infected plant, but it can also prevent the seeds from germinating in the first place.
She has also worked with crown rust as a biocontrol agent for wild oats. Crown rust and oat smut are host specific, that is they only infect wild oats. Unfortunately, crown rust does not kill the wild oats outright. But still, plants with rust are smaller and produce fewer seeds, so it has the some effect. They think that by combining several types of diseases that they can come up with a good way to control this weed.
Related Links:
Iowa State University- Oats
Wild Oats - Avena fatua
Root and Crown Rust
Oat Crown Rust
Oat Disease Descriptions - Crown or Leaf Rust
Rusts
PG-IV: P128 - Crown Rust Resistance in Hexaploid Oat Determined by Two Complementary Loci
<I>Puccinia coronata</I> Corda
UGA - Extension Plant Pathology
ESSO Farm-Tek Advances - Herbicide Resistant Wild Oats
Aimee Dillon Darci Battaiola
Photo taken by Mr. Breitenfeldt
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