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Protecting crops against black stem rust

Tracking down the fungus: In the research laboratory, Bayer CropScience employees Anne Suty-Heinze (left) and Karin Wieczorek test wheat plants for infection with black stem rust.

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Tracking down the fungus: In the research laboratory, Bayer CropScience employees Anne Suty-Heinze (left) and Karin Wieczorek test wheat plants for infection with black stem rust.

Monheim – A new, aggressive strain of the black stem rust fungus, designated Ug99, is threatening global wheat stocks. Discovered in Uganda in 1999, the fungus attacks the stalks and leaves of wheat plants and consumes their metabolic products – which then are no longer available to the plants for growth. As a result, the grain withers and the harvest fails. Field trials conducted in Kenya have demonstrated that black stem rust can be effectively controlled with the cereal fungicide Folicur® from Bayer CropScience.

The fungus is invading wheat fields around the world and spreading faster than agricultural scientists expected. As a result, it threatens to cause devastating harvest losses in major wheat-growing countries in the future. If the fungal spores were to reach India, the world’s largest producer of wheat after Europe and China, this would lead to increasing shortages of this important staple crop. Experts put the potential annual losses at more than €2.2 billion.

Folicur® is already available to farmers in Kenya and Iran to combat stem rust. Bayer CropScience plans to register further fungicides based on Folicur® in these two countries to control the disease.

At present, no wheat varieties are resistant to infection with Ug99. The medium-term goal is therefore to breed varieties that are resistant to the aggressive fungus.