Mix and manage: Cultivar mixtures can maintain yield under high wheat blast disease pressure

Originating in South America, wheat blast disease has spread to both Asia and Africa and is considered a significant threat to food security. Bangladesh experienced the first outbreak of wheat blast outside of the Americas in 2016. Shortly thereafter, the blast-resistant variety BARI Gom 33 was released. Seeds of this variety are however not as widely available as required, although the disease threat remains. While varietal mixtures have been shown to mitigate some symptoms and yield losses associated with other fungal diseases in wheat, there is a complete research gap on this topic as it pertains to wheat blast. As such, we evaluated the potential of using BARI Gom 33 as a component of a variety mixture under high disease pressure in Bangladesh. During three cropping seasons, blast symptoms and yield were determined in a field experiment for the highly blast-susceptible variety BARI Gom 26, the moderately susceptible BARI Gom 30, the resistant BARI Gom 33, and seven mixture combinations of the three varieties using artificial inoculation to increase disease pressure. In addition to wheat blast,