Abstract
Wheat spikes, grown in a field that received only natural dew- and rainfall or in a plastic greenhouse that received water from a sprinkler system, were inoculated with a deoxynivalenol (DON)-producing Fusarium graminearum species complex to test the relationship between wetness duration after inoculation and subsequent DON concentration. When wetness duration, measured with a wetness sensor, exceeded 150 h, DON concentration increased with increasing durations of wetness. Wetness duration can thus serve as an index to predict the beginning of DON accumulation. In the field, accumulation of DON was related not only to rainfall but also to wetting by dewfall.
