The Department of Agriculture and Food, Western Australia has reassured the State’s wheat growers to proceed with their normal seeding plans despite the detection of wheat streak mosaic virus on three Western Australia properties this month.

Executive Director of Biosecurity and Research Rob Delane said although the virus could be transmitted in wheat seed, there was no need for growers to change their program unless they had a known infection.

“The current assumption should be that general commercial seed for sowing in 2006 has a comparable status to seed used very successfully by Western Australian farmers in previous years,” Mr Delane said.

Mr Delane said wheat streak mosaic virus had also been linked to volunteer wheat which was believed to act as a green bridge for the virus vector wheat curl mite. 

He said while summer rain activity had boosted the green bridge, most growers had controlled volunteer wheat in the lead up to sowing to control weeds and reduce other disease risks such as stripe and stem rusts.

“At this stage we consider general precautions such as destroying the ‘green bridge’ between growing seasons, avoiding extremely early sowing and using healthy wheat seed will help industry minimise any impacts of wheat streak mosaic in Western Australia,” he said. 

Mr Delane said the Department’s surveillance and testing was continuing.