Studies on Sunflower Rust Disease in Egypt.

Abstract

Sunflower (Heliar:thus annus L.) is considered to be one of the most important oil crops in Egypt. The government rendered faithful efforts to fill the gap between the higher consumption of the nutrition crops and the increasing population through vertical and horizontal extension of such a crop.

Sunflower crop is subjected to the attack by many diseases including rust which was recorded in Egypt during 1931.

The obtained results could be summarized in the following items: •

A survey for sunflower rust was carried out in the Northern governorates i.e. Kafr El-Sheikh, Dakahleia, Gharbia, Behera and Qaluobeia during 1999 and 2000 growing seasons. Two phsiologic races were identified i.e. race 300 and race 320 from the collected samples, following the triple code system suggested by Limpert and Muller (1994). So far, this work (recent race identification of sunflower rust) has been performed in Egypt. Race 320 was the prevalent one, since it occupied 82.3% of the total isolates distributed within the five governorates. In contrast, race 300 was relatively lower than race 320, since it occupied 17.7% of the total isolates.