A new fungal plague is spreading out of Africa, threatening the world with famine!
A strain of wheat rust, a crop disease that hasnt been a problem for 40 years has mutated, and its back with a vengeance.
The new Rust strain has been destroying 10 percent of the wheat harvest in east Africa in crops grown under intensive conditions with all the array of fungicides known to man, And its on the move. In pore less developed countries like China and India the destruction could be much much worse. As it is the world is only producing just enough grain to feed itself and for several years the amount of wheat produced by the world has been less than the amount consumed. Any drop in production will affect the whole world from rural China to the United States.
The world is only starting to wake up to the threat despite the fact that the scale of the problem has been known about since 1999. The only way to defeat this plague is to breed new varieties of wheat that are resistant to it as we did back in the 1950s in the Green Revolution, since witch wheat rust has been a spent force world wide, until now. There is only one problem with this, of the 50 genes we know of that provide rust resistance only 10 provide any resistance at all to this new strain, and those only appear in less than 1 percent of the worlds crop.
An organisation called the GRI (Global Rust Initiative) is attempting to breed new varieties with the few genes that will provide resistance, but they have been struggling to get enough funding to carry out this vital work. Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug, the so called father of the Green Revolution who helped rid the world of this problem back in the 50s, now aged 93 is speaking out again in an attempt to wake the world up. At last governments are starting to take note but it may be several years to late.
Theres another problem, the strain of rust (if it finds its other host plant the barberry bush, native to west Asia, which is the rusts next stop on its way out of Africa) can mutate again sharing and swapping its genes with other strains of the fungi. Meaning that any new varieties of wheat that we breed now may become useless if or when this happens. This could mean that it may be many years until resistant varieties can be created and produced in sufficient quantitys to supply the world.
I cant believe this isnt more widely known about, its not going to happen fastm, but it is going to happen, and when it does ..
Heres a link to a more detailed article http://environment.newscientist.com...-billions-at-risk-from-wheat-superblight.html
But dont have nightmares
A strain of wheat rust, a crop disease that hasnt been a problem for 40 years has mutated, and its back with a vengeance.
The new Rust strain has been destroying 10 percent of the wheat harvest in east Africa in crops grown under intensive conditions with all the array of fungicides known to man, And its on the move. In pore less developed countries like China and India the destruction could be much much worse. As it is the world is only producing just enough grain to feed itself and for several years the amount of wheat produced by the world has been less than the amount consumed. Any drop in production will affect the whole world from rural China to the United States.
The world is only starting to wake up to the threat despite the fact that the scale of the problem has been known about since 1999. The only way to defeat this plague is to breed new varieties of wheat that are resistant to it as we did back in the 1950s in the Green Revolution, since witch wheat rust has been a spent force world wide, until now. There is only one problem with this, of the 50 genes we know of that provide rust resistance only 10 provide any resistance at all to this new strain, and those only appear in less than 1 percent of the worlds crop.
An organisation called the GRI (Global Rust Initiative) is attempting to breed new varieties with the few genes that will provide resistance, but they have been struggling to get enough funding to carry out this vital work. Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug, the so called father of the Green Revolution who helped rid the world of this problem back in the 50s, now aged 93 is speaking out again in an attempt to wake the world up. At last governments are starting to take note but it may be several years to late.
Theres another problem, the strain of rust (if it finds its other host plant the barberry bush, native to west Asia, which is the rusts next stop on its way out of Africa) can mutate again sharing and swapping its genes with other strains of the fungi. Meaning that any new varieties of wheat that we breed now may become useless if or when this happens. This could mean that it may be many years until resistant varieties can be created and produced in sufficient quantitys to supply the world.
I cant believe this isnt more widely known about, its not going to happen fastm, but it is going to happen, and when it does ..
Heres a link to a more detailed article http://environment.newscientist.com...-billions-at-risk-from-wheat-superblight.html
But dont have nightmares
