Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year (2017-2018 to 2018-2019).

Fusarium head blight (FHB) is a disease of wheat and other cereals, which in Canada is caused by Fusariumx000D
graminearum. The disease causes significant quality and quantity losses in grain, and affects food safety byx000D
producing secondary metabolites, also known as mycotoxins. Over the last three decades, the disease hasx000D
caused $1.5 billion in losses to Canadian producers. The incidence of the disease varies from year-to-year andx000D
active monitoring of standing crops is key to developing timely corrective strategies to mitigate losses. Thex000D
current method of assessing FHB is for trained crop scouts to manually survey the field. The process is slow,x000D
subjective and labour intensive. Farmers Edge, an agricultural data analytics company, has vested interest inx000D
developing technologies to detect FHB from field images. Therefore, Farmers Edge wants to partner with Dr.x000D
Paliwal's research team to develop an imaging method capable of objectively assessing FHB infection levels inx000D
standing crops. In the realm of this preliminary study, visible, near-infrared and thermal imaging techniquesx000D
will be evaluated to determine the most effective way of imaging crops at the wheat-breeding nursery in thex000D
Department of Plant Science (University of Manitoba). Additionally, multivariate classification models will bex000D
developed and tested and their suitability in FHB detection will be tested. The outcome of this project will helpx000D
our industry partner (i.e. Farmers Edge) by adding FHB detection from field data to the array of services theyx000D
provide to their clients.