*2.4. Disease Assessment*

Evaluation of FHB disease severity started on the 10th day after inoculation and was repeated on 14th, 18th, 22nd, and 26th day, until the control heads started to become yellowish. The percentage of infected spikelets was rated for the whole group of heads. On average, 24 spikelets were in a head. When one spikelet was infected in each head, this was 4%, when only one was in the bunch of 15, then this was 0.3% [28], all percent data mean disease index (DI). This was sensitive enough to provide a comparable data series to FDK and DON data. Their arithmetical mean values across all observations per groups of heads were used as entries for statistical analysis. At maturity (beginning in July), the groups of inoculated heads were harvested manually and stored in paper bags. The samples were threshed using a stationary thresher (Wintersteiger LD 180, Ried, Austria) at low wind, in order to retain the shriveled *Fusarium*-damaged kernels (Mesterházy, 1987, 1995). Cha ff was separated using an Ets Plaut-Aubry (41290 Conan-Oucques, France) air separator. FDK was rated visually (estimation of scabby grains with definite tombstone, or chalky-white and rose discoloration as a percentage). All of the work was finished at the end of July.
