1. Introduction
Septoria tritici Blotch (STB) poses a serious and persistent challenge to wheat grown in temperate climates throughout the world. This threat has triggered an intensive research effort to evaluate current disease control practices and to look for novel control strategies. Despite the huge economic importance of this pathogen (contained within this article and in Torriani et al., 2015), solid facts in peer-reviewed publications regarding yield losses or, indeed, the financial implications of disease are hard to find. For example, published losses due to STB disease recorded in one particular study in a defined geographic region have become widely adopted in the literature as being relevant to losses in all regions of the world (Eyal et al., 1973 and Eyal et al., 1987). Such extrapolations should not form the basis for economic, political and agricultural decision-making. In this article, we therefore set out to collate all available information, gathered from peer-reviewed scientific publications, publically accessible data-bases and web-sites, to paint a more realistic picture of the importance of STB in Europe. We hope that this merged information provides a solid basis with which we can evaluate the challenge of STB disease in Europe.