Here we are half way in to December, and the weather has been frightful. Well there isn't any corn or soybeans in the field, but there is winter wheat. How will our recent icy weather affect these fields? Will it kill the wheat or will we have more disease because of the ice?

Interestingly, while both ice and molds can significantly interfere with winter wheat survival, they do so in quite different circumstances. Ice can actually smother the plant and kill it. Wheat plants, even when they are dormant, need to respire. When ice covers the tissue above ground or if the entire plant is encased it is unable to respire and may be killed in as few as a couple of days. Much of the wheat in our area was briefly covered with ice but not long enough for us to be too concerned about smothering. This smothering is different from the type of ice damage that happens to wheat plants more typically in the spring, when ice crystals form within plant tissues and essentially destroy the cells. We saw quite a bit of this in the spring of 2007, let's hope it doesn't repeat.

What may prove to be a concern, however, is the continued moisture we received after the ice and ice melt that saturated many of the fields, particularly in low areas. These saturated areas will be much more likely to heave in our usual freeze thaw, freeze thaw, weather we commonly have in central Illinois.

Do any of these ice scenarios have anything to do with winter kill from molds? Well, here's some decent news, the answer is 'no'. The molds that cause problems for wheat in the winter are called snow molds. Damage from the snow molds is the most common when we first get a nice thick covering of snow prior to the soil freezing. This provides an insulated environment of around 32 degrees in which our more typical snow molds such as pink or gray snow mold are perfectly able to survive and grow. In the spring, these areas will have dead plants that usually still have fungal growth showing on the dead tissue and the areas will appear to be somewhat melted out.

Now as a holiday treat to give yourself, I recommend signing up for the 2008 Illinois Crop Protection Technology Conference. It is right after the New Year on January 9-10, 2008. This is the 60^th annual meeting of the conference. An overview of the topics are: High-Production Soybean Management, Managing Nutrients and Water Quality, Pest Resistance and Resistance Management, IPM in the Crosshairs, and High-Production Corn Management. Register online, or download the registration form at http://ipm.uiuc.edu/conferences/cptc/registration.html.