Does anyone know of an early leek that has good rust resistance?
You cant get a rust resistant leek that i know off. We ( local leek club lads ) have had numerous discusions on this subject and we came to the conclusion, rust spores are carried on the wind but they must have a host and its our conclusion the host plants are weeds so less weeds greater the chance of not getting rust on the leeks.
A biologist friend of mine thinks that rusts are very species specific & all have 2 hosts - 1 for winter & 1 for summer. Having searched the internet, there's nothing I can find to support this...
Thanks for your replies - I won't spend any more time searching for the perfect leek!
For reasons I won't bore you with, I had 6 rows of leek seedlings in the seedbed until mid-August - they weren't well thinned out, so may have been somewhat stressed. Rustwise they performed as follows:
Leek Flextan F1 (Spring) : fair rust resistance
Leek Apollo F1 (Winter) good rust resistance
Leek Autumn Giant 2 Hannibal Organic: fair rust resistance
Leek : Pandora Organic (Autumn): poor rust resistance
Leek: Toledo (Nov-March) : fair rust resistance
Leek: Tropita (Aug-Nov) : poor rust resistance
All were ok to plant on and I'm really talking about appearance rather than damage but, as you can see, the 'earlies' (Pandora & Tropita) were worst affected, hence my question.
Usually with rusts they do have two different hosts but as any biologist knows there are always exceptions. As far as i can see not very much research has been done on leek rust their still seems to be quite a bit of confusion what species the rust is and whether it is the same as the rust affecting other alliums. That pretty much indicates that it hasn't been studied in any great depth unlike the rusts affecting the cereal crops which have great economic importance. The money for research won't be available so it won't be done.
Generally rust is more likely to infect stressed plants i.e. water stressed (too much/too little); nutrient deficient or too closely planted.
The RHS recommends a high potassium feed and says high nitrogen can increase infection with rust.
I had terrible rust on Musselburgh leeks in my first year on soil recently converted from pasture, which would have had high nitrogen (clover). However after removing the outside leaves they were fine to eat still.
I expect it hasn't had the attention because it doesn't destroy the crop.
Possibly also there is a chemical solution available to commercial growers.
It's because it's not an important enough disease. Science research requires funding and the people who fund research now are only interested in something which will eventually make money except in very rare cases. Rust on leeks doesn't usually wipe out the crop and not everybody eats leeks anyway unlike wheat for example.
It's a bit like how we always send in troops to sort out countries that have oil but never send any to countries that don't have anything!
Gasp - how cynical ;D