Aid donors join forces to fight wheat rust

 Emerging strains of stem rust disease of wheat, such as Ug99, are spreading out of East Africa and threatening the world’s wheat supply. But the fight against this disease received a boost this week from a collaboration between the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The organisations have combined to fund Cornell University with US$40 million (£25 million) to continue its work to develop wheat varieties that are resistant to the new rust strains.

The Ug99 strain of rust was discovered in Uganda in February 1999 (Pretorius et al., 2000). Before that, scientists had made great strides in combating stem rust using multi-genic resistance. With the introduction of major resistant gene Sr31 and a number of other minor genes, stem rust became less of a problem to world agriculture. But now it is back with renewed virulence, and Nature reported on 28 February that in Kenya last year, Ug99 destroyed around 80% of the wheat crop. Spores have also spread to Ethiopia, Sudan, Yemen and Iran. Scientists fear the other major wheat-growing regions of the world, including North America and South Asia, will be next. Read more of this post