This is the first year of varietal testing of faba beans at the NDSU Langdon Research Extension Center. With an objective to know the prevalent diseases of a new emerging crop, we monitored the crop throughout the growing season for the major diseases that infect faba beans. Chocolate brown spot of faba beans was the only disease found and the observations on its incidence and severity are presented below in Figure 1. Chocolate brown spot is caused mainly by two species of Botrytis: fabae and cinerea. The disease can be diagnosed by dark-brown spots surrounded by an orange-brown ring on leaves, flowers and stems. Cool temperatures of 59-72 F and relative humidity above 80% are ideal conditions for disease development. When disease data was compared with yield, there were no correlations found between disease incidence and severity. No significant differences were found in disease incidence. However, there were significant differences found among different varieties in terms of disease severity.
Please see the supporting table with data in attached pdf at the top of this page.
