Wheat disease could threaten food security

Scientists believe stem rust, which looks like red dust on wheat, could threaten global food security, reported ABC News.

A new strain of the disease is spreading throughout eastern and southern Africa and researchers say it could arrive in Australia on high winds.

Researchers are racing for ways to protect vital food crops and have just been given a $40 million boost from the Bills Gates Foundation.

Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) chair of cereal rust research at the University of Sydney, Professor Robert Park, says stem rust has the potential to kill wheat crops.

He says there is one particular variety of wheat rust which is proving difficult to stop – UG99 – found in Uganda in 1999.

Twelve years on, UG99 has moved into southern Africa.

“Now we know from our long-term work at the University of Sydney that there was one incidence at least, in the late 1960s, where stem rust was transported from southern or central Africa to Australia by high-altitude winds,” Professor Park said.

“This now means that we’re pretty much in the firing line.

“In 1973 we had a single epidemic of wheat stem rust in south-eastern Australia, and at that time the damage bill was estimated at something like $300 million. There were crops that were actually killed.

“So you can gauge from that the potential for this disease to cause destruction.

“The added significance of UG99, this new race of stem rust, is that it overcomes pretty much all of, or most of the genes that have been resistant that have been bred into wheat by wheat breeders over the past 50 years.”