*Millions face famine as crop disease rages*

'The Bible talks about plagues afflicting crops and these are almost
certainly references to stem rust,' said Rick Ward, of the Global Rust
Initiative, which has been set up to counter the new threat. When an
outbreak occurred, a field of ripening wheat would be transformed into a
mass of blackened vegetation.

Robin McKie and Xan Rice
Sunday April 22, 2007
The Observer

Scientists say millions of people face starvation following an outbreak
of a deadly new strain of crop disease which is spreading across the
wheat fields of Africa and Asia.

The disease, known as black stem rust, has already destroyed harvests in
Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia. Now researchers report that stem rust spores
have blown across the Red Sea into the Arabian peninsula and infected
wheat fields in Yemen. Spores have also blown northwards into Sudan.

Experts believe the disease - Puccinia graminis - will spread to Egypt,
Turkey, the Middle East and finally India and Pakistan, which would lead
to the destruction of the principal source of food for more than a
billion people. Some observers warn that the disease could reach Egypt,
which is heavily dependent on wheat, before the end of this year.

'This thing has immense potential for social and human destruction,' the
international agriculture expert and Nobel prize-winner Norman Borlaug
warned this month.

Black stem rust has blighted wheat production in many parts of the world
for thousands of years. So pernicious were its effects that the Romans
prayed to a stem rust god called Robigus.

'The Bible talks about plagues afflicting crops and these are almost
certainly references to stem rust,' said Rick Ward, of the Global Rust
Initiative, which has been set up to counter the new threat. When an
outbreak occurred, a field of ripening wheat would be transformed into a
mass of blackened vegetation.

Every few years one of these outbreaks would lay waste to entire
harvests, sometimes sweeping across continents in only a few months.

But in the 1960s scientists and agriculture experts began to develop
ways to counter the menace. Disease-resistant varieties of wheat were
produced and planted in the West and in developing countries. As a
result, it disappeared from most farms.

'Stem rust was something we felt we had solved,' Mariam Kinyua, a plant
breeder at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute in Njoro, told the
journal Science this month.

However, a new strain of the fungus - known as Ug99 - was found in
breeding nurseries in Uganda several years ago. The discovery caused
alarm because virtually every variety of wheat tested with the strain
was severely affected.

'Varieties that had been resistant for many years were no longer
resistant,' said Wafa Khoury, a plant pathologist at the United Nations
Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome.

Within a year Ug99 was found in fields in Kenya and Uganda. The damage
inflicted was severe but did not cause huge social problems because
wheat is not a staple crop in either country. Nevertheless a field
centre for Ug99 was established in Njoro and samples of wheat from
around the world, including Argentina, Canada and Australia, were sent
for testing. Virtually every single sample was found to be susceptible.
'That's what really caused the panic,' said Khoury.

This point was backed by Ward. 'The world had been safe for 50 years,
but now the biblical plague that used to afflict our crops has returned.
This is a very serious situation.'

The chilling feature about the new stem rust strain is the manner of its
attack: Ug99 specifically targets resistance genes in wheat. As a
result, it is now believed that 80 per cent of wheat varieties grown in
the developing world are likely to be susceptible to the fungus. 'It's
heaven for the [Ug99] pathogens,' said Khoury.

The spread of Ug99 to Yemen, where wheat is a staple, was confirmed in
February by a team that included Khoury.

Now studies of wind patterns suggest Ug99 will soon spread to Saudi
Arabia and the Near East. Eventually Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Iran,
Pakistan and Europe could be affected.

'We have to breed new wheat strains that are resistant to Ug99,' said
Ward. 'If we do not, then we face the prospect of countries like Egypt
and Pakistan suffering calamitous losses of wheat production. That would
trigger all sorts of destabilising effects, ones that could have
profound implications for the West. We have to move quickly. There is no
time to lose.'