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 Editorials | Environmental | April 2008 
Bill Gates Boosts Fight Against Killer Wheat Fungus
 Debora MacKenzie - NewScientist.com
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| | The fungal strain was named for its discovery in Uganda in 1999. | | |
Ciudad Obregón, Mexico - The battle against the wheat disease Ug99 just got more serious.
On Wednesday, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced it would give $26.8 million over the next three years for research to breed new wheat strains that resist the fungus.
At the same time, though, the US government looks likely to withhold a grant to the crop breeding institutes leading the battle worth double that.
Ug99 is a strain of black stem rust, a lethal fungal disease of wheat, first detected in Uganda in 1999. Virtually none of the commercial wheat now grown worldwide has any resistance to it.
The fungus recently invaded Iran faster than predicted and could cause mass starvation if it hits India before new resistant strains are ready.
Grant cuts
The Durable Rust Resistance project is being set up to bring researchers from 15 institutes worldwide together to track the spread of the fungus, and breed wheat with resistance based on several genes working together.
Such wheat is hoped to be less likely to be damaged by the fungus than current varieties. The project will also look for useful resistance genes in wild plants related to wheat.
The Gates award was announced in Ciudad Obregón, a town in Mexico's arid northern Sonora state where, 63 years ago, American plant breeder Norman Borlaug developed the high-yielding, stem rust-resistant wheat that led to the Green Revolution, and for which he was awarded the Nobel prize.
The work also led to the founding of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, known by its Spanish acronym CIMMYT, which is based in Mexico City but still conducts field trials of wheat varieties in Obregón. CIMMYT will receive $2.2 million yearly from the award.
CIMMYT is one of 15 labs in the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), which conducts farming research for developing countries. New Scientist has learned that CGIAR lab directors have been warned that the US is unlikely to renew its yearly grant of $56 million, which covers nearly half the labs' basic operating costs. No official explanation for the cut has been forthcoming.
Millions at risk
Borlaug, 94 and suffering from advanced cancer, was present at the Gates announcement, where the Patronata – the local farmers union – announced that it had stumped up $600,000 to add to the Ug99 fight.
"It is ironic that when Mexican farmers can contribute money to this effort, the Bush administration seems to want to take it away," says Borlaug. "Yet the US has a huge amount to lose if Ug99 spreads."
Rust project coordinator Rick Ward of Cornell University called the cut "utterly incomprehensible".
CIMMYT is growing several wheat varieties in Obregón, and in test plots in Kenya and Ethiopia where Ug99 is widespread, but wheat breeders at the lab say much more effort is needed to turn the lines into high-yielding varieties that farmers around the world can use.
"We're hoping more donors will come on board," says Katherine Kahn of the Gates Foundation. "Our concern is people like the 50 million poor families in India who depend on wheat to live." |
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