**5. Conclusions**

Despite possible constraints, the results of the present study provide further insight into the epidemiology of the most important foliar diseases of malt barley in Greece and can help farmers to improve their IPM practices in order to create higher profits while improving the environment's sustainability. It was shown that both NFNB and leaf scald can be carried over from one season to the next on infected seed under Mediterranean conditions. However, the disease severity was more pronounced after the barley tillering phase when the soil had been successfully inoculated first, which supports the hypothesis that the most important source of primary inoculum for NFNB comes from infected host residue.

Our results show that the disease severity for both pathogens, when the malt barley was cultivated in the same field for a second year, presented a non-significant increase from anthesis onwards upon increasing the rate of nitrogen application. However, it was demonstrated that the lack of a significant effect of the N rate on disease severity was mainly hidden behind spatial and genotypic e ffects. In addition, it was revealed that the e ffect of disease infections on the yield, grain size and grain protein content varied in relation to the genotype, pathogen and stage of crop development. These data can help in the development of long-term strategies for the minimization of net form net blotch and barley leaf scald occurrence.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, P.V., A.S. and D.I.T.; methodology, P.V. and D.I.T.; software, P.V. and A.S.; formal analysis, P.V.; investigation, P.V. and V.K.; resources, N.D. and G.E.; data curation, P.V.; writing—original draft preparation, P.V., A.S., C.S.L. and D.I.T.; writing—review and editing, P.V., D.I.T., N.D. and D.K.; visualization, P.V. and A.S.; supervision, N.D., G.E. and D.I.T.; project administration, V.K.; funding acquisition, N.D. and G.E. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was funded by Athenian Brewery S.A.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
