Potential Infection Risks of the Wheat Stripe Rust and Stem Rust Pathogens on Barberry in Asia and Southeastern Europe.

Barberry ( spp.) is an alternate host for both the stripe rust pathogen, f. sp. (), and the stem rust pathogen, f. sp. (), infecting wheat. Infection risk was assessed to determine whether barberry could be infected by either of the pathogens in Asia and Southeastern Europe, known for recurring epidemics on wheat and the presence of barberry habitats. For assessing infection risk, mechanistic infection models were used to calculate infection indices for both pathogens on barberry following a modeling framework. In East Asia, Bhutan, China, and Nepal were found to have low risks of barberry infection by but high risks by . In Central Asia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, southern Russia, and Uzbekistan were identified to have low to high risks of barberry infection for both and . In Northwest Asia, risk levels of both pathogens in Turkey and the Republic of Georgia were determined to be high to very high. In Southwest Asia, no or low risk was found. In Southeastern Europe, similar high or very high risks for both pathogens were noted for all countries. The potential risks of barberry infection by and/or should provide guidelines for monitoring barberry infections and could be valuable for developing rust management programs in these regions. The framework used in this study may be useful to predict rust infection risk in other regions.