Plant experts from the University of Minnesota are researching on mutant fungus Ug99, found in Africa and the Middle East, in a bid to prevent possible famine, starvation and political unrest.

 

Puccinia graminis (Ug99) is a new mutant strain of fungus that erupts from the pockmarks on the stems of wheat and barley, causing rusty red spores that can blow across continents. Ug99 was discovered in Uganda in 1999, and this new race of stem rust comes from cereal grain pathogens, thus creating new generations of spores rapidly. It has affected wheat farms in East Africa and spread to the Red Sea to Yemen and Iran.

 

"This fungus has such a tremendously explosive reproductive capacity," said Brian Steffenson, a plant pathology professor at the University who researches on the Ug99 effects in Kenya. Steffenson fears that Ug99 would spread to South Asia, Pakistan and India. That would be devastating for the world's wheat and economy,'' he said.

 

"The stem rust fungus, like various flu strains that attack humans, is capable of mutating and overcoming the resistance of previously resistant cereal crops," Steffenson said. He fears that the Ug99 fungal strain would make its way into the Western part of the world and affect the region.

 

80% of the world's wheat and 95% of the Upper Midwest region's top bread-baking grain is vulnerable to the new pathogen, according to University of Minnesota wheat breeder Jim Anderson.