Symptoms
The relative virulence of strains of A. avenae subsp. avenae to their hosts have revealed that the strains are more virulent to sweetcorn than to maize and sugarcane and only virulent or avirulent to oats. Young plants are more susceptible (Hu et al., 1997). Although many of the strains are found to have a common host range they differ in their pathogenicity (Kadota et al., 1996). Finger millet strains appear to infect rice and maize plants while maize strains can infect rice plants (Kadota and Nishiyama, 1998). Pearl millet strains have been found to induce atypical symptoms in the form of restricted necrosis without water-soaking on sweetcorn, resembling those caused by the watermelon pathogen A. avenae subsp. citrulli; sweetcorn strains produced typical water soaked stripes both in millet and sweetcorn. Strains from pearl millet appear to be different from other strains previously isolated from maize in Georgia, USA