Wheat fungus spreads out of Africa
Stem rust threatens key crops in Asia.
The average human being eats more than 500 calories worth of wheat every day — it is a staple among staples. Now, a strain of fungus that threatens most of the world's wheat crop has spread from its origin in Africa, across the Red Sea to Yemen.
Prevailing winds will probably start moving the fungus spores eastwards, experts say. The fungus could be in South Asia in four years, where wheat is the number-one crop in Pakistan and the number-two crop in India.
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Comments
1) Africa negatively impacts the planet big time, again.
2) Massive sustained worldwide famine is all but guaranteed.
3) The exact genetic solution to the problem is known - and in hand!
4) It will cost $billions and require a decade of panicked plant breeding for the US to survive, or...
5) The solution requires one summer of genetic engineering in an advanced undergrad lab to save a billion lives.
6) No Franken-foods!
WHAT WILL WE DO TO SAVE THE CHILDREN! First, let's convert 25% of US annual corn harvest into fuel ethanol to replace a whopping 4.3% of annual US gasoline consumption. Don't eat food, burn it. Enviro-whiners say poultry, swine, and cattle should be free-range fed anyway.
Hunger is due to weather, famine is due to politics.
Posted by: Uncle Al | January 23, 2007 11:51 PM
Using engineered high-yield plants on a large scale might help to feed millions of people. However once a biological threat as this fungus attackes these cultures the hole system collapses. Having a large variety of wild-type wheat-plants in a culture, should make it not that succeptible to diseases. Their broad genetic pool should contain subtypes that are resistant and could maintain the culture.
Reducing the natural variability in favor of man-made species might be a chance, however ecaping pathogen-threads is a good reason why hundreds of sub-species (some more, some less productive) evolved over the centuries.
Posted by: T. Dittgen | January 24, 2007 10:44 AM