leaf Senescence and Leaf Disease

​A few weeks after pollination, dynamics affecting resistance to leaf pathogens changes. Cytokinins are increasingly concentrated in the developing grain embryos, causing more translocation of sugars from leaf tissue to the ear, reducing availability for cellular metabolism in the leaf tissue.  Leaves lower in the canopy, in the shadow of upper leaves have reduced photosynthetic rates due to receiving less than 5% of the light intensity as those exposed to full sunlight. Not having sufficient energy to maintain its cells, senescence of these leaves begins.  Among those cell functions is the production of anti-pathogen biochemical that limit leaf pathogens.
 
Disease pressure increases in lower leaves with the higher humidity and longer dew periods that favor leaf pathogens.  Cool, cloudy and wet weather in those 50 days of grain fill after pollination further favors the fungal leaf pathogens. This increased disease pressure on as leaf tissues occurs at the time in which they are losing the ability to react to invading organisms.  Lowest leaves senesce first as the lower photosynthetic rate and increased disease kills tissue. Even weak pathogens, such as Fusarium species, invade the vascular tissue of such leaves causing the leaf to wilt, while the upper canopy leaves remain green and fully functional.
 
The senescence pattern progresses up the plant as it gets closer to meeting the active translocation period of 50 days after pollination.  If there was exposure to pathogens such as Exserohilum turcicum, the cause of northern corn leaf blight, earlier in the season, the disease appears to move up the plant.  This can cause difficulty in comparing resistance levels among hybrids varying in maturity such as in research plots.  Those with earlier pollination dates may appear to be more susceptible, especially if the environment favored the disease, simply because the leaf senescence was more advanced than the later hybrids.  This can be misleading not only in determining differences in innate resistance levels but also in predicting potential grain yield or increased stalk damage from the disease.
 
One of the obstacles to evaluating and presenting precise resistance ratings for a disease is relative leaf senescence among corn hybrids.  Add this to environmental factors and pathogen intensity pressures and races and one should only expect that disease resistance ratings are not precise predictors of damage from a leaf disease. Corn Journal (8/17/2017)