Getting UP to speed on the RedMenace (WIRED)

I had a fascinating discussion with a close friend this morning about Rust, the plant disease type.  My friend has been in the farming business his entire life, though also an environmental professional.  He relayed a story to me that finished up with this new strain of wheat rust (plant disease) that decimates the yield to the crop.  The extent to which this has progressed since first identified in 1998 in Uganda is rather staggering.  Wind blown, it has made its way to Yemen by 2006 and Iran in 2007.  The wheat field of northern India and Central Asia, Russia are at risk.  There is a fabulous resource at RustMapper which graphically shows the knowledge to date and areas of wheat production, globally, among other bits of relevant detail.

Red Menace: Stop the Ug99 Fungus Before Its Spores Bring Starvation

• By Brendan I. Koerner  
• February 22, 2010  |  
• 12:00 pm  |  
• Wired March 2010

Riding the winds, Ug99 has breached the best defenses science can offer.
Photo: Gallery Stock

As they queue to fill water jugs from a rusty communal tap, the women of Njoro can’t help but gawk at the odd scene across the road. In a wheat field ringed by barbed wire, a dozen men wearing white polyethylene jumpsuits stand in a tight huddle, eyes fixed on the green-and-amber stalks that graze their knees. They chat in foreign tongues — Urdu, Farsi, Chinese — that are rarely heard here amid the acacia trees and donkey carts of Kenya’s Rift Valley. The men’s hazmat-style safety gear suggests they might be hunting down one of the infamous viruses that flourish in this part of the world — Ebola, perhaps, or Marburg.

READ FULL STORY HERE

So I wanted to learn.  What.  Where.  How.  Status.  One of the first places I often look for materials of this nature is a Scholar Google search - quick and easy.  Fully complete, I expect not, but shall suffice for this purpose.  And I will continue to keep track of progress in this new (to me) and interesting field.


January 2006, Volume 90, Number 1
Page 113

DOI: 10.1094/PD-90-0113A

Disease Notes

The Spread of Stem Rust Caused by Puccinia graminis f. sp. tritici, with Virulence on Sr31 in Wheat in Eastern Africa

R. Wanyera and M. G. Kinyua, Kenya Agricultural Research Institute, National Plant Breeding Research Center, P.O. Njoro, Kenya; Y. Jin,USDA-ARS Cereal Disease Laboratory, University of Minnesota, St. Paul; and R. P. Singh, CIMMYT, Apdo, Postal 6-641, Mexico D.F., Mexico

Stem rust resistance in wheat cultivars with Sr31 has been effective and durable worldwide for more than 30 years. Isolates of Puccinia graminis f. sp. tritici with virulence to Sr31 were detected in Uganda in 1999 (1). 

Results from this study indicated that stem rust isolates with virulence on Sr31 are now wide spread in the Eastern Africa highlands and pose a threat to wheat production in the region, as well as in other wheat production areas where Sr31resistance is important. A rapid deployment of effective resistance genes to this race in breeding programs throughout Eastern Africa and Asia is needed to reduce this threat.