There appears to be a new strain of yellow rust in winter wheat crops in Scotland and England.

Speaking to technical manager with Bayer Crop Science in the UK Gareth Bubb on this week’s Tillage Podcast, he said: “We are dealing with a new race of yellow rust. It is appearing in a lot of varieties that we wouldn’t expect it in.

"There are some big changes which are catching people out this season.”

“Yellow rust cycles quite quickly and it likes those cool conditions which we’ve had, but we are seeing it in varieties which we really wouldn’t expect it at all - Champion, Dawsum, Typhoon,” Gareth explained.

He noted that samples are being sent to NIAB, a research Institute, and added that members of the industry seem to be “pretty sure we are dealing with a new strain of yellow rust”.

“Yellow rust is quite sporadic. It’s different throughout the country. We are seeing quite a lot of it in Scotland. We have a trial site in Edinburgh and I think every variety in the untreated [plots] have got yellow rust, which is more than we’ve got in some of the cases in England which is unusual,” Gareth added.

Last week, agronomists responding to the Irish Farmers Journal’s Accompany the Agronomist survey also commented that they were finding rust hard to get under control in some fields, particularly in the north east of the country where rust is often most prevalent and is thought to come in the wind over the Irish Sea.

You can listen to Gareth on this week's Tillage Podcast out at 4pm on Thursday.