Crop scientists fear the Ug99 fungus could wipe out more than 80% of worldwide wheat crops as it spreads from eastern Africa. It has already jumped the Red Sea and traveled as far as Iran. Experts say it is poised to enter the breadbasket of northern India and Pakistan, and the wind will inevitably carry it to Russia, China and even North America -- if it doesn't hitch a ride with people first."It's a time bomb," said Jim Peterson, a professor of wheat breeding and genetics at Oregon State University in Corvallis. "It moves in the air, it can move in clothing on an airplane. We know it's going to be here. It's a matter of how long it's going to take."
Always good to read comments by the guys at 'Schneier on Security' who 'balance the actual threat of it'. - Haase
New Scientist - "This thing has immense potential for social and human destruction.' Startling words - but spoken by the father of the Green Revolution, Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug, they are not easily dismissed..."The famines that were banished by the advent of disease-resistant crops in the Green Revolution of the 1960s could return, Borlaug told New Scientist." As I understand it, what they're worried about now isn't so much the destruction of industrialized nations' wheat crops, but those of third-world countries.
On the The RustMapper - coloring of reportage ranged from the dire — “‘Stem rust’ fungus threatens global wheat harvest,” said The Guardian – to the mildly triumphant — “Scientists gain in struggle against wheat rust,” said the AP. For the science, click here or here, for the layman terms..
