An infection that struck wheat crops in Sicily last year has now been deemed a new and unusually devastating strain of fungus, researchers say.
Although wheat in Kentucky and across North America has not been susceptible to this strain, in 2011, UK researchers discovered a single diseased wheat head in a research plot at the UK Research and Education Center in Princeton, KY. Then, late last year, a wheat blast epidemic swept through Bangladesh. And has now hit Bangladesh and is also present in India, raising the concern that wheat blast may soon become pandemic.
Wheat blast is caused by a fungus which infects wheat heads and prevents seed production, which at present cannot be resisted by cultivated wheat, resulting in crop losses. Fungicides show limited effectiveness due to the development of resistance within the fungus.
This sudden spread of the fungus has prompted intensive global efforts to understand the disease and to breed resistant wheat species.
British scientists in collaboration with their counterparts from Japan and the US are trying to control the disease with genetics rather than develop more powerful chemical fungicides. They have now discovered mutation in a key gene that codes for a protein that is
normally recognized by wheat cultivars that possess a key blast resistance protein and intend to use this mutation to compromise the function of the ‘good’ protein, thereby allowing the fungus to escape the wheat resistance response by avoiding recognition.“This study provides important insights into the mutational events that underlie the evolution of new crop diseases,” said Farman. “This information will help to spur the development of crop varieties with more durable resistance.”
