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Researchers in
Njoro, Kenya evaluating wheat for resistance to Ug99 in October 2005. Click
the image for more information about it. |
Close-up of stem rust on
wheat. Click the image for more information about it.
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Heading Off World Wheat Threat
By Don Comis
November 9, 2007
Wheat breeders and Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists are counting on a "southern
strategy" to protect the entire United States from Ug99, a strain of wheat stem
rust disease that has spread from Africa to the Arabian Peninsula.
The fungal strain was named for its discovery in Uganda in 1999.
The disease spreads by wind-blown fungal spores. Planting highly
resistant wheat varieties in the southern United States where stem rust fungus
can survive winter could prevent the disease from taking hold in the South and
then spreading to the rest of the country.
Ug99 has overcome most of the stem rust resistance genes bred into
wheat varieties during the past several decades. Last year, ARS Cereal Disease
Laboratory (CDL)
plant pathologist
Yue
Jin confirmed a new, even more virulent variant of Ug99 in Kenya. His
colleague, geneticist
Les
Szabo, also at the CDL in St. Paul, Minn., leads the stem rust genome
project.
The CDL is the nation's primary facility for identifying various forms
of stem rust and other cereal rusts, such as wheat leaf rust and oat crown
rust.
Jin and Szabo are part of a team of ARS scientists in laboratories
across the United States working with breeders to put resistance genes into
wheat and barley varieties. They rely particularly on four ARS regional
small-grains genotyping laboratories for their capacity to search for
breeder-friendly DNA markers for locating resistance genes.
Nationally, ARS scientists and university cooperators have planted
susceptible and resistant wheat varieties at various locations around the
country to watch for new rust strains.
Internationally, ARS provided funds and expertise to the
Global Rust Initiative formed in 2005
by two international organizations to fight the new strain of the disease.
Read more
about this research in the November/December 2007 issue of Agricultural
Research magazine.
ARS is the U.S. Department of
Agriculture's chief scientific agency.