Fungus threatens wheat around world

LOS ANGELES, June 14 (UPI) -- Scientists are trying to develop wheat strains resistant to a fungus that has spread from Africa to Iran and is likely to show up soon in India and Pakistan.

The Ug99 fungus, also known as stem rust, is likely to spread worldwide, either through wind-blown spores or carried inadvertently by people, food industry analysts said.

"It's a time bomb," Jim Peterson, an expert on wheat genetics at Oregon State University in Corvallis, told the Los Angeles Times. "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."

Stem rust is a longtime bane of wheat farmers and afflicted wheat's wild ancestors before that. The United States has had major outbreaks of fungus, most recently in 1962 when more than 5 percent of the crop was killed.

Resistant strains of wheat apparently overcame the problem. But a new strain appeared in Uganda in 1999 and began spreading from there.

Government scientists at the Cereal Disease Laboratory in St. Paul, Minn., have begun work on wheat resistant to the latest fungus. But the process can take a decade or so.