"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.

An infection is coming, and almost no one has heard about it. This infection isn't going to give you flu, or TB. In fact, it isn't interested in you at all. It is after the wheat plants that feed more people than any other single food source on the planet. And because of cutbacks in international research, we aren't prepared. 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.

The disease is Ug99, a virulent strain of black stem rust fungus (Puccinia graminis), discovered in Uganda in 1999. Since the Green Revolution, farmers everywhere have grown wheat varieties that resist stem rust, but Ug99 has evolved to take advantage of those varieties, and almost no wheat crops anywhere are resistant to it.

The strain has spread slowly across east Africa, but in January this year spores blew across to Yemen, and north into Sudan (see Map). Scientists who have tracked similar airborne spores in this part of the world say it will now blow into Egypt, Turkey and the Middle East, and on to India, lands where a billion people depend on wheat.

There is hope: this week scientists are assessing the first Ug99-resistant varieties of wheat that might be used for crops. However, it will take another five to eight years to breed up enough seed to plant all our wheat fields.

The threat couldn't have come at a worse time. Consumption has outstripped production in six of the last seven years, and stocks are at their lowest since 1972. Wheat prices jumped 14 per cent last year.

Read the rest of the article at

http://environment.newscientist.com/channe...=mg19425983.700

bees are leaving us and now this!?

global warming, peak oil and food supply problem, all not inter related, coming in one shot.

I was looking at a short video the other day about Borlaug. The conclusion was that he has contributed 1 billion persons to world population, through his efforts.



Nobel websight ca. 1970-

"To his scientific goal he soon added that of the practical humanitarian: arranging to put the new cereal strains into extensive production in order to feed the hungry people of the world - and thus providing, as he says, "a temporary success in man's war against hunger and deprivation," a breathing space in which to deal with the "Population Monster" and the subsequent environmental and social ills that too often lead to conflict between men and between nations. Statistics on the vast acreage planted with the new wheat and on the revolutionary yields harvested in Mexico, India, and Pakistan are given in the presentation speech by Mrs. Lionaes and in the Nobel lecture by Dr. Borlaug. Well advanced, also, is the use of the new wheat in six Latin American countries, six in the Near and Middle East, several in Africa.

An eclectic, pragmatic, goal-oriented scientist, he accepts and discards methods or results in a constant search for more fruitful and effective ones, while at the same time avoiding the pursuit of what he calls academic butterflies. A vigorous man who can perform prodigies of manual labor in the fields, he brings to his work the body and competitive spirit of the trained athlete, which indeed he was in his high school and college days."

Don't know if they can plant potato, corn, rice, etc. as an alternative food before getting the right seed?

I'm moving to the wilderness, building a giant bubble, and becoming self-sufficient. The world is going down the proverbial tubes.

Unpro, I know what you mean. This wheat disease started in Uganda, and if I remember correctly the AIDS epidemic started in Africa too. Some people may say that this is just coincidence and that these things with the bees and the coral and wheat are just effects of global waming. Maybe so and maybe not. Maybe these conditions are being created by something else or, if nothing else, allowed to continue at the current rate. Just like with the tragedy in Louisiana, the government was slow to respond. During the AIDS epidemic, the government was slow to respond. and now with these current problems, I have yet to see what's being done to reverse, halt the process, or undo the damage that has already been done.

I heard a recent interview and the guest stated an important comment that really made me wonder. His comment was "If I want to control you, I'll control your food production."