The disease is not apparent until heading, at which time, smutted heads emerge slightly earlier than healthy heads. At first, each smutted head is covered by a delicate, paperlike, grayish membrane. These membranes break shortly after the smutted heads have emerged and expose a dark brown to black, powdery mass of spores. This spores are easily dislodged, leaving only the bare rachis.
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Infected plants do not demonstrate symptoms until heading. Kernels of infected plants are replaced by masses of dark brown smut spores. Smutted heads are hard and compact. Infected plants may be stunted.
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This gives the infected plants an advantage in that the flowers of uninfected plants are more physically and morphologically susceptible to infection. The teliospores in the smutted grain heads disperse to the open flowers of the healthy plants, and the cycle continues.
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The major symptom of loose smut is the "smutted" grain heads, which contain masses of black or brown spores where the grain would normally be. The spores completely replace the grain head so that there is no grain to be harvested on infected plants. It may be possible to identify infected plants in the field before they reach the flowering stage by looking for plants which are taller and more mature than the rest of the field. The fungus causes infected plants to grow slightly taller and mature slightly sooner than the uninfected plants in the field.
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Italian children play Asinello ("little donkey"). In Sweden the game is called Svarte Petter, in Finland Musta Pekka, in Denmark Sorteper and in the Netherlands Zwarte Piet. However, there it is the same name as Saint Nicholas', helper, a character similar to Knecht Ruprecht or Krampus in German-speaking regions. It is known in Dutch as zwartepieten ("playing Black Pete") or pijkezotjagen ("Chasing the jack of spades"), in Polish as Piotruś ("Peter"), in Icelandic as Svarti Pétur ("black Peter"), in Czech as Černý Petr ("black Peter") and in Greek as "mu(n)tzuris" (μου(ν)τζούρης, "smudged, smutted").
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By 2014 he had published 232 scientific papers and 10 books on smut fungi. His monograph Smut Fungi of the World, published in 2012 by (APS Press) was described as “a culmination of more than 50 years of dedicated work and passion for smut fungi.” The nearly 1500 page monograph has been described as the "Holy Book of Smut Fungi", because it comprises the description of the 1700 known species with their synonyms, important literature, their host plants and over 3.500 illustrations of which 650 are the author's drawings of smutted plants. The third edition of his Illustrated Genera of Smut Fungi was published in 2013.
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Both before and after retirement, Vánky travelled widely, collecting and investigating smut fungi in about 55 countries all over the world. The collecting trips were very often combined with national or international workshops, conferences or congresses in the field of mycology, where he was lecturer or speaker. Between 1989 and 2009 his German wife, Christine, helped him in collecting and taking photos of smutted plants. Over 60 years Vánky amassed the largest smut fungus collection in the world, Herbarium Ustilaginales Vánky (HUV), containing over 22,000 samples. In August 2013 it was relocated to the Queensland Plant Pathology Herbarium, Brisbane, Australia (‘BRIP’), and placed at the disposal of the mycological community.
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