Rapid food price rises have highlighted serious concerns about food security globally and have had a huge impact on achieving Millennium Development Goal 1. Since 2007, an estimated 100 million more people have fallen into absolute poverty. Most live in developing countries where low incomes (less than $1 per day) make it difficult to access food. Access to sufficient food for dietary needs and food preferences defines food security. However, whilst price rises have brought food security into sharp focus, underlying problems need to be addressed. Over the last three to four decades, there has been chronic under-investment in agriculture at all levels. Development aid to agriculture has declined and often in-country policies do not support the sector. Low crop yields are common in many developing countries and improved productivity is vital to reducing rural poverty and increasing food security. Whilst the causes of low productivity are complex, one major contributory factor is crop losses due to plant health problems. Often accurate information on the extent of these losses is missing but estimates of 30–40% loss annually from “field to fork” are common. Any future solution regarding improved global food security must address these losses and that means improving plant health. Two trans-boundary diseases, wheat stem rust race Ug99 and Coffee Wilt Disease of Coffea are highlighted. CABI has a number of plant health initiatives and one radical approach (Global Plant Clinic) involves partnership with in-country services to deliver plant health advice to farmers at the point of demand. Such innovations are entirely consistent with a proposed new “Green Revolution” which would need to be “knowledge intensive”.

The importance of plant health to food security.

The two species of coffee commercially harvested in Brazil and the world are Coffea arabica (Arabica coffee) and C. canephora (Conilon coffee). Coffee leaf rust, caused by Hemileia vastatrix, is the most frequent disease that affects coffee crops. However, damage has not been estimated, and the chemical control has not been determined for the Conilon coffee in Brazil. This study evaluated a new strategy to control coffee leaf rust through the application of triazole fungicides in soil and then to estimate the damage caused by the disease after treatment. To this end, an experiment was conducted in a randomized block design with eight treatments and four replications from November 2008 to May 2011. Every 30 days, leaves were collected from experimental plots to assess the disease incidence and severity. The coffee production was also evaluated between April and May each year. The disease progress curves were plotted with these data, and the area under the disease progress curve for the disease incidence and severity was calculated. The data of the incidence of disease and production were also used to estimate the damage caused by rust. The treatments with the applications in the soil were effective in controlling the disease; however, through the joint analysis of the disease’s control and productivity, the best treatments were those that used ciproconazol or flutriafol in the soil, with or without foliar sprays treatments. There were no additional benefits with the foliar fungicides in Conilon coffee. The damage caused by rust in Conilon coffee can reach 47 % if measures are not implemented to the disease control.

Chemical control of coffee leaf rust in Coffea canephora cv. conilon

The Ug99 group of stem rust races (Puccinia graminis Pers. f. sp. tritici Eriks. & E. Henn.) has evolved and migrated. While the original variant overcame the widely deployed gene Sr31, and Sr21 (in Chinese Spring background), but not Sr21 in Einkorn, a new strain of Ug99, virulent on Sr24, was detected in 2006 and caused a severe epidemic in 2007 in Kenya. Forms virulent on Sr36 and Sr21 were identified in 2007. Likewise, an Ug99 variant virulent to both Sr21 and Sr24 was identified in 2008 in Kenya. Simultaneously, the original strain spread to Yemen and Sudan in 2006. Fears of a spread into Asia were confirmed when this race was detected in Iran in 2007. This has raised serious concerns that Ug99 could follow the same migratory route from Africa to Asia as Yr9 and cause major epidemics across the epidemiological region of South Asia. In 2005–06, screening in Kenya and Ethiopia of wheat materials from Asian countries revealed a very low frequency of lines resistant to Ug99 and its variants. Under the umbrella of the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI), significant efforts have been made to counter the challenges posed by Ug99 and its derivative races. Diverse sources of resistance to the pathogen have been identified and incorporated in high-yielding wheat backgrounds. The most promising strategy has been to deploy spring wheat varieties possessing adult plant resistance (APR) in infested and bordering areas to decrease inoculum amounts and slow down the development of new virulence, for example four CIMMYT genotypes with Sr2+ have been released in Afghanistan and their seed is also distributed in region bordering Iran. For an immediate remedy, race-specific resistance genes can be deployed in combinations using marker-assisted selection. Several Ug99-resistant varieties have already been released in South Asian countries (Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan), and seed dissemination is underway. The Ug99 risk in the region can be reduced to minimum levels by identifying, releasing and providing seed of high-yielding and resistant cultivars.

Protecting South Asian Wheat Production from Stem Rust (Ug99) Epidemic

Stem rust, caused by Puccinia graminis f. sp. tritici is an important disease of wheat worldwide. To estimate grain yield losses due to stem rust, replicated experiments including twelve wheat cultivars i.e.  Gemmeiza 7, Gemmeiza 9, Gemmeiza 10, Gemmeiza 11, Sakha 61, Sakha 93, Sakha 94, Sids 12, Sids 13, Giza 168, Misr 1 and Misr 2 were evaluated for adult plant resistance at Sakha Research Station, Kafr El-Sheikh, Egypt during 2011/12 and 2012/13 growing seasons. The field experiment was surrounded by spreader area of highly susceptible varieties i.e. Morroco and Max inoculated with a mixture of stem rust races as a source of inoculum. Disease severity was recorded each 10 days and area under disease progress curve (AUDPC) was estimated and ranged from 100 to 475 in 2011/12 and 100 to 750 in 2012/13. It was found that, yield losses ranged between 2.47 % in the wheat cultivar Misr 2 to 6.29 % in the wheat cultivar Sids 12 during 2011/12, while during 2012/13 ranged from 1.96 % in the wheat cultivar Gemmeiza 7 to      8.21 % in the wheat cultivar Misr 1. High correlation was found between yield losses with disease severity and AUDPC.

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Effect of stem rust infection on grain yield and yield components of some wheat cultivars in egypt

Screening for adult plant resistance in wheat to stem rust, caused by Puccinia graminis f. sp. tritici, is generally conducted in field plots. Although such evaluations are successful if managed properly, field ratings are time consuming, expensive, weather dependent, and open to inoculum of unwanted races or other confounding diseases. The objective of this study was to develop a dependable system of screening the response of adult plants to stem rust under greenhouse conditions. A comparison of inoculation methods and incubation environments showed that plants inoculated with urediniospores suspended in water, followed by a 24 h dew period in a plastic chamber constructed in a greenhouse, gave the most consistent results. Measurements of response type, stem rust severity, and frequency in follow-up experiments indicated that the most reliable infection was obtained when plants sprayed with 1.25 mg urediniospores per ml water were incubated in the plastic chamber. Using the optimized protocol, a Kariega × Avocet S doubled haploid population was inoculated with two P. graminis f. sp. tritici races. Depending on the race, composite interval mapping showed flag leaf infection type to be significantly influenced by regions on chromosomes 6A, 6D, and 7D. Stem rust severity and reaction type mapped to chromosomes 6D and/or 6A. The Lr34/Yr18/Sr57 gene derived from Kariega on chromosome 7D affected the rust response on flag leaves but not on stems of greenhouse-grown plants. This study showed that phenotyping and genetic analysis of especially major effect stem rust resistance in adult wheat plants is possible and reproducible under controlled conditions in a greenhouse.

https://apsjournals.apsnet.org/doi/pdf/10.1094/PDIS-02-16-0163-RE

Development of a Greenhouse Screening Method for Adult Plant Response in Wheat to Stem Rust

The emergence of a new virulent race of stem rust (Puccinia graminis f. sp. tritici) of wheat (Triticum aestivum), TTKS (Ug99), calls for urgent measures to contain the disease, which is a serious threat to wheat production in Kenya. Nine commercial fungicides were evaluated for control of stem rust in the field in three locations in 2005 and 2006. Ten treatments, including untreated control, were applied on field plots in a randomized complete block design with four replications. Assessment of stem rust severity was done at growth stage (GS) 55 (heading), GS 65 (flowering), and GS 75 (late milk) and expressed in terms of mean rust severity and area under the disease progress curve (AUDPC). In general, fungicide treatment significantly (P ≤ 0.05) reduced rust severity, AUDPC, and losses in grain yield and 1,000-kernel weight for cv. Duma compared with the untreated control. Stem rust was severe in both years across all sites, resulting in significantly less grain yield in the control treatment. T...

https://apsjournals.apsnet.org/doi/pdf/10.1094/PDIS-93-9-0929

R. Wanyera

Papers

Foliar Fungicides to Control Wheat Stem Rust, Race TTKS (Ug99), in Kenya