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Dark Treatment of Wheat Inoculated With Soil-Borne Wheat Mosaic and Barley Stripe Mosaic Viruses. A. S. Rao, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Plant Pathology, University of Nebraska, Lincoln 68503, Present address of senior author: Department of Botany, S. V. University, Tirupati, A. P., India; M. K. Brakke, Research Chemist, Crops Research Division, ARS, USDA, Department of Plant Pathology, University of Nebraska. Phytopathology 60:714-716. Accepted for publication 25 November 1969. DOI: 10.1094/Phyto-60-714.

The percentage of Michigan Amber wheat (Triticum aestivum) plants with systemic soil-borne wheat mosaic symptoms was increased by a postinoculation dark treatment, or by removing the leaves and observing new growth. The increase was found in plants grown at 13 C and inoculated in the two-leaf stage by leaf-rubbing or through the roots by the vector, Polymyxa graminis. A 6-day dark treatment, starting 6 days after inoculation, was the best of those tried. A similar increase in systemic symptoms was observed after a postinoculation dark treatment of plants inoculated with barley stripe mosaic virus.