Stem Rust Resistant Wheat Could Be Unveiled Soon, Say Scientists

Jacob Ng’etich

26 June 2011

Nairobi — Scientists say they are close to producing super varieties of wheat that can resist a new strain of wheat rust called the Ug99, and boost yields by as much as 15 per cent.

The researchers from Kenya Agricultural Research Institute, Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre, Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research and the US Department of Agriculture say the new varieties have resistance to all three wheat rusts: stem rust, yellow rust and leaf rust.

This could be a significant breakthrough, five years after the launch of global efforts to protect the crop from variants of this deadly new form of wheat rust.

In Kenya for example, the Ug99 pathogen has seen the annual wheat production of 350,000 tonnes drop by about a third, forcing the country to rely on imports in order to meet its demand of a million tonnes.

Peter Njau, the head of Durable Rust Resistance Project and wheat breeder at the Kenya Agriculture Research Institute, said the wheat rust had among other challenges increased the cost of production by 40 per cent.

“The new resistant varieties will come in handy as they posses important characteristics including improved yield performance, drought tolerance as well as regional suitability,” Mr Njau told The EastAfrican.

According to research presented at a global wheat rust symposium in Minneapolis last week, scientists reported that variants of the Ug99 stem rust are becoming increasingly virulent and are being carried by wind beyond East Africa where they were identified. They say that up to 90 per cent of wheat around the world is susceptible to Ug99 and its variants.

Ronnie Coffman, who heads the Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat project at Cornell University, which is co-ordinating the fight against the disease said new data showed that key Ug99 variants have now been identified across East and Southern Africa and that it may only be a matter of time before the spores travel to India or Pakistan, and even Australia and the Americas.

“We are facing the prospect of a biological firestorm, but it’s also clear that the research community has responded to the threat at top speed, and hence the new superior varieties,” said Mr Coffman. “But the job of science is not over. Declining support for public agricultural research got us into this problem with Ug99. Unless that changes, the problem is likely to arise again in a few years. We are dealing with a constantly-evolving pathogen, and we need to stay at least one step ahead at all times.”

Mr Coffman noted that governments must be willing to invest in the political and economic capital necessary for agricultural research to secure the world’s wheat supply.

Researchers at Penn State University and USDA are now adapting a system that was used to forecast soybean rust movements to track how Ug99 might travel from Africa by winds into the wheat-growing regions of the US.

Susceptible varieties cover most wheat fields throughout the breadbaskets of South Asia, the Middle East, China, Europe, Australia and North America, estimated at over 225 million hectares.

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