Kenyan research bodies clash over cause of Maize Lethal Necrosis

by Gatonye Gathura

The disease threatening to wipe out this year’s maize crop had by the end of August spread to four provinces.

A task force established by the government to look into the crisis says the disease, which was first reported in Bomet last year, has spread to Rift Valley, Nyanza, Eastern and Central provinces.

It has destroyed crops on more than 90,000 hectares, according to the task force which presented its findings for the first time in public on Thursday.

“Where the crops were infected when young, losses are up to 100 per cent, ” Dr Anne Wangai, a member of the task force and a senior researcher with the Kenya Agricultural Institute (Kari), said.

The report reveals glaring conflicts between what the researchers have found out and what the Ministry of Agriculture has been telling the public.

Dr Wangai says the disease is caused by two different viruses working in cahoots.

She told the annual Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology in Africa in Nairobi that extensive trials both locally and abroad had confirmed that the infection was a viral disease.

But a statement issued by Agriculture minister Sally Kosgei in June, and posted on the ministry’s website, said the disease was also caused by a fungus.

“Confirmed results now indicate the combination of disease causing pathogens as mainly viruses and fungi... a fungus has been detected as one of the pathogens involved in the disease complex,” the statement said.

However, independent research by Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate (Kephis) was categorical that the disease was caused by a fungus.

Following Dr Kosgei’s statement, Kephis managing director James Onsando changed position but maintained that this was a new disease caused by a combination of viruses and fungi.

Kephis are part of the task force investigating the disease; so are several seed companies.

“The minister’s statement does not contradict our findings,” Dr Onsando told Saturday Nation without elaborating further.

However, scientists at International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT) are also categorical that the disease is caused by a virus.

“A combination of two viruses has been confirmed to be responsible for the Maize Lethal Necrosis Disease. This fact is now well established,” Dr Fred Kanampiu of CMMYT said.

Asked why Kephis could have got it so wrong, if indeed they are wrong, Dr Wangai argued that just like HIV, where an infected person is easy target for opportunistic infections, this may have been the case.

“A plant infected by these viruses has low immunity and will succumb to other infections, including fungal,” she said.

But scientists, who did not want to be identified for fear of victimisation, attributed the conflicting findings to sibling rivalry between Kari and Kephis, with the minister choosing to appease both. “One is dead wrong and the government knows which one, but does not want to hurt anybody’s ego,” a source said.

But the confusion between facts, politics and commercial interests does not end there.

The government in its statement is also categorical that the disease is not transmitted through seeds.

“The disease affects all varieties of maize and we have confirmed that it is not seed borne,” Dr Kosgei said. “There is therefore no fear of spreading the disease through seed that is supplied by seed companies.”

But it has emerged that researchers have not established this as a fact. In fact they are screening seeds to determine whether they could be spreading the disease.

“We are conducting tests to verify seed transmission of viruses in local cultivars,” Dr Wangai said.

According to the task force report, a study done elsewhere in 1991 found seeds to be a possible transmission route.

Speaking on condition of anonymous, scientists attending the Thursday meeting and another one for science journalists in Nakuru a week ago, said seed companies afraid of compensating farmers and hurting their businesses are fighting against any attempt to link the disease with their products in spite of the facts.

While new in Kenya, Dr Wangai said the disease was first detected in Peru in 1973 and later in the US, Argentina and Mexico.

However, the report from Kephis suspects the disease to have originated from a maize seed production farm in Taveta, which had a similar problem in 2003.

Daily Nation

Maize Lethal Necrosis reduces yields for some Kenyan farmers by up to 60%

An apparently previously unknown-in-Kenya maize disease is reported to be ravaging the crop in the areas where it has been found. Dubbed maize lethal necrosis, it makes the crop turn yellow and dry up, but little is known about the mode of transmission.

Researchers at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization are worried about the disease but don’t yet know enough about it to make any specific recommendations to farmers.

However, reports from KARI offer hope that there are maize hybrids that are resistant to the virus that causes the disease. Farmers are also being encouraged to plant alternative crops in order to break the virus transmission cycle.

Since it was first reported in the Bomet County area in September 2011, maize lethal necrosis is said to have affected at an area of least 75,000 hectares.

African Agriculture

Insect experts to help diagnose disease affecting Rwandan coffee

The expertise of entomologists at the University of California, Riverside has a worldwide impact..

Now Thomas Miller, a professor of entomology and a Jefferson Science Fellow, will travel to Rwanda, Africa, to help solve a mystery surrounding the country's specialty coffee sector – a sector that accounts for 26 percent of the country's agricultural exports.

A defect called "potato taste" – thought to be caused in part by the antestia bug – is threatening to deter international buyers from purchasing Rwandan coffee.

"When stink bugs feed on plants, they can affect the taste of the fruit from the plants," Miller explained. "For example, the brown marmorated stink bug feeding on tomatoes changes their taste. Certain tea plants, when fed upon by leafhoppers, produce leaves with improved taste. Much of the underlying reasons for these are not known."

Determining the specific cause of potato taste is a major challenge Miller and Christian Cilas, a French scientist, face after they travel to Rwanda on Jan. 7. Currently, there is no definitive link between potato taste and antestia bug, only hypotheses.

Miller will stay in Rwanda for two weeks – one week will be comprised of meetings, including three national workshops for stakeholders across private sectors, research, academia, and government; the other week will be used in field visits. He expects to get a better understanding of potato taste and its causes, gather samples for analysis in the United States, and begin collaborations with Rwandan scientists.

"We will devise a multi-pronged strategy for ridding Rwanda's specialty coffee of potato taste defect," Miller said. "And we will also assist Rwanda in reaching out and making contacts with people grappling with similar problems globally."

Starting Jan. 9, Miller and Cilas will join a group of researchers from the National University of Rwanda to solve the mystery surrounding potato taste.

The collective effort to eliminate potato taste in Rwandan specialty coffee is being organized under the auspices of the Global Knowledge Initiative (GKI), an international non-profit. Through the Learning and Innovation for Network for Knowledge and Solutions (LINK) Program, GKI helps scientists, innovators, and entrepreneurs worldwide construct purpose-driven networks to tackle challenges like the one Miller and Cilas will confront in Rwanda. A full analysis of LINK Rwanda will enable the international team to maximize efforts and leverage shared resources.

University of California Riverside

Resistant wheats and Ethiopian farmers battle deadly fungus

When a devastating stripe rust epidemic hit Ethiopia last year, newly-released wheat varieties derived from international partnerships proved resistant to the disease, and are now being multiplied for seed. Wheat farmers and breeders are embroiled in a constant arms race against the rust diseases, as new rust races evolve to conquer previously resistant varieties. Ethiopia’s wheat crop became the latest casualty when a severe stripe rust epidemic struck in 2010.

“The dominant wheat varieties were hit by this disease, and in some of the cases where fungicide application was not done there was extremely high yield loss,” says Firdissa Eticha, national wheat research program coordinator with the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR). “This is a threat for the future because there is climate change—which has already been experienced in Ethiopia—and the varieties which we have at hand were totally hit by this stripe rust.”

Ethiopia is not alone; stripe rust has become a serious problem across Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, with epidemics in 2009 and 2010 which many countries have struggled to control. What’s new is the evolution of stripe rust races that are able to overcome Yr27, a major rust resistance gene that many important wheat varieties rely on. Although recent weather conditions have allowed the new rust races to thrive, they first began to emerge more than a decade ago, and CIMMYT’s wheat program, always looking forward to the next threat, began selection for resistance to Yr27-virulent races in 1998.

“CIMMYT has a number of wheat lines that have shown good-to-excellent resistance to stripe rust without relying on Yr27, in screening in Mexico, Ecuador, and Kenya,” says Ravi Singh, CIMMYT distinguished scientist and rust expert who leads the breeding effort in Mexico. Many of these are also resistant to the stem rust race Ug99 and have 10-15% higher yields than currently-grown varieties, according to Singh. The current step is to work with national programs to identify and promote the most useful of the resistant materials for their environments—a process that was underway in Ethiopia when the epidemic struck.

Eticha is leading his country’s fight against stripe rust. Reflecting on the disease, he says: “For me it is as important as stem rust. I find it like a wildfire when there is a susceptible variety. You see very beautiful fields actually, yellow like a canola field in flower. But for farmers it is a very sad sight. Stripe rust can cause up to 100% yield loss.” There is no official figure yet on the overall loss to Ethiopia’s wheat harvest for 2010, but it is expected to be more than 20%.



The other common name for stripe rust is yellow rust. Severely-infected plants look bright yellow, due to a photosynthesis-blocking coating of spores of the fungus Puccinia striiformis, which causes the disease. These spores are yellow to orange-yellow in color, and form pustules. These usually appear as narrow stripes along the leaves, and can cover the leaves in susceptible varieties, as well as affecting the leaf sheaths and the spikes. The disease lowers both yield and grain quality, causing stunted and weakened plants, fewer spikes, fewer grains per spike, and shriveled grains with reduced weight. Epidemic flourishes with damp weather Normally, Ethiopia has two distinct rainy seasons, one short and one main, allowing for two wheat cropping cycles per year. However, 2010 saw persistent gentle rains throughout the year, with prolonged dews and cool temperatures—perfect weather for stripe rust. Most wheat varieties planted in Ethiopia were susceptible, including the two most popular, Kubsa and Galema, so damage was severe. Under normal conditions, the disease only attacks high-altitude wheat in Ethiopia, but last year it was rampant even at low altitudes. This could reflect the appearance of a new race that is less temperature sensitive, or simply the unusual weather conditions; Ethiopian researchers are currently waiting for the results of a rust race analysis.

There was little Ethiopia could do to prevent the epidemic; imported fungicides controlled the disease where they were applied on time, but supplies were limited and expensive. Newly-released, resistant varieties provide a way out of danger. In particular, two CIMMYT lines released in Ethiopia in 2010 proved resistant to stripe rust in their target environments: Picaflor#1, which was released in Ethiopia as Kakaba, and Danphe#1, released as Danda’a. Picaflor#1 is targeted to environments where Kubsa is grown, and so has the potential to replace it, and Danphe#1 could similarly replace Galema. Both varieties are also high-yielding and resistant to Ug99.





Seed multiplication of resistant CIMMYT varieties As soon as the situation became clear, EIAR and the Ethiopian Seed Enterprise (the state-owned organization responsible for multiplication and distribution of improved seed of all major crops in Ethiopia) worked together to speed the multiplication of seed of these varieties, using irrigation during the dry seasons. This is happening now, with almost 500 hectares under multiplication over the winter—421 of Picaflor#1 and 70 of Danphe#1. Financial support from this project came from the USAID Famine Fund. Two resistant lines from the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) were released in Ethiopia in 2011, and will add to the diversity for resistance.

Eticha does not foresee any difficulty encouraging farmers to adopt the new varieties. In 2010 they were grown by 900 farmers on small on-farm demonstration plots, as part of EIAR’s routine annual program, so they have been seen—free of stripe rust—by thousands of farmers, and there will be more demonstration plots as more seed becomes available. However, “farmers are at risk still even if the varieties are there,” he says, “the problem is seed supply.” Some seed will reach farmers this year, but the priority will be ongoing multiplication to build up availability as fast as possible.

Hans-Joachim Braun, director of CIMMYT's Global Wheat Program, visited Ethiopia in 2010. “The epidemic was a real wake-up call,” he says. “Researchers have known for more than ten years that the varieties grown are susceptible. Farmers are not aware of the danger, so it is the responsibility of researchers and seed producers, if we know a variety is susceptible, to replace it with something better."






Exploring rust solutions in Syria


The ongoing fight against the wheat rust diseases is an international, collaborative effort involving many partners in national programs and international organizations. CIMMYT works closely with ICARDA, which leads efforts against the wheat rust diseases in Central and West Asia and North Africa. At the International Wheat Stripe Rust Symposium, organized by ICARDA in Aleppo, Syria, during 18-20 April 2011, global experts developed strategies to prevent future rust outbreaks and to ensure the control and reduction of rust diseases in the long term.


Other participating organizations included CIMMYT, the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI), the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the UN, the International Development Research Center (IDRC, Canada), and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). More than 100 scientists from 31 countries presented work and shared ideas on wheat rust surveillance and monitoring, development and promotion of rust-resistant wheat varieties, and crop diversity strategies to slow the progress of rust outbreaks.


CIMMYT was represented by Hans-Joachim Braun and Ravi Singh. “Wheat crops and stripe rust like exactly the same conditions,” says Braun, “and they both love nitrogen. This means that where a farmer has a high yield potential, stripe rust takes it away, if the wheat variety is susceptible. In addition to the really devastating epidemics, the disease is very important because even in bumper years, farmers who grow susceptible varieties still can’t get a good yield.”


One thing all the attendees agreed on was the immediacy of the rust threat. New variants of both stem rust (also known as black rust) and stripe rust (or yellow rust), able to overcome the resistance of popular wheat varieties, are thriving under the more variable conditions caused by climate change, increasing their chances of spreading rapidly. Breeders in turn are quickly developing the varieties farmers need, with durable resistance to stem and stripe rust, as well as improved yield performance, drought tolerance, and regional suitability.


Other major areas of focus are the development of systems for monitoring and surveillance of rust to enable rapid response to initial outbreaks, and overcoming bottlenecks in getting resistant seed quickly to farmers. There is much to be done, but Singh is confident: “If donors, including national programs and the private sector, are willing to invest in wheat research and seed production, we can achieve significant results in a short time.”



"Ethiopian scientists responded quickly to the epidemic", says Braun, "but there were heavy losses in 2010. What we need is better communications between scientists, seed producers, and decision makers to ensure the quick replacement of varieties.”

Building on a strong partnership The value of the collaboration between CIMMYT and Ethiopia is already immeasurable for both partners. CIMMYT materials are routinely screened for rust at Meraro station, an Ethiopian hotspot, in increasing numbers as rust diseases have returned to the spotlight in recent years. CIMMYT lines are also a crucial input for Ethiopia’s national program.

“The contribution of CIMMYT is immense for us,” says Eticha. “CIMMYT provides us with a wide range of germplasm that is almost finished technology—one can say ready materials, that can be evaluated and released as varieties that can be used by farming communities.” Ethiopia has favorable agro-environments for wheat production, and the bread wheat area is expanding because of its high yields compared to indigenous tetraploid wheats. “Wheat is the third most important cereal crop in Ethiopia,” explains Eticha, “and it is really very important in transforming Ethiopia’s economy."

Bekele Abeyo, CIMMYT senior scientist and wheat breeder based in Ethiopia, works closely with the national program. CIMMYT helps in many ways, he explains, for example with training and capacity building, as well as donation of materials, including computers, vehicles, and even chemicals for research.

“In addition, we assign scientists to work closely with the national program, and facilitate germplasm exchange, providing high-yielding, disease resistant, widely-adapted varieties.” Speaking of the stripe rust epidemic, Abeyo says, “last year, the Ethiopian government spent more than USD 3.2 million just to buy fungicides, so imagine, the use of resistant varieties can save a lot of money. Most farmers are not able to buy these expensive fungicides. During the epidemic, fungicides were selling for three to four times their normal price, so you can see the value of resistant varieties.”

“I think East Africa is colonized by rust. Unless national programs work hard to overcome and contain disease pressure, wheat production is under great threat,” says Abeyo. “It is very important that we continue to strengthen the national programs to overcome the rust problem in the region.”

With Yr27-virulent stripe rust races now widespread throughout the world, Ethiopia’s story has echoes in many CIMMYT partner countries. The challenge is to work quickly together to identify and replace susceptible varieties with the new, productive, resistant materials.

CIMMYT

Scientists find desert cure for dates disease

by Toufik Bougaada

An Algerian research team said that four plants are effective against the fungus that causes Bayoud disease. The fungus, which spreads mostly through root contact, can currently only be tackled by isolating healthy palms from diseased counterparts. It has been termed a "plague to Saharan agriculture" by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The team, from Béchar University, tested extracts from the plants, which grow in the Algerian Sahara desert. People of south-west Algeria use the extracts as an antifungal traditional medicine.

The extracts successfully inhibited growth of Fusarium oxysporum forma specialis albedinis (FOA), which causes Bayoud disease.

The team, led by Abdelkrim Cheriti, director of the university's Phytochemistry and Organic Synthesis Laboratory (POSL), announced its results at a press conference last month (11 November) and says it has a paper in press.

Cheriti pointed out that most desert plants produce substances that help them adapt to their environments and fend off diseases.

"We had the idea of using such metabolites, found in plants that grow in the same environment as the date palms and are able to resist Bayoud, to create an effective treatment for date palms," he told SciDev.Net.

A field trial of the treatment began in October in south-west Algeria and results are expected within three years.

"Bayoud inflicts serious damage on the production of dates in Algeria and North Africa, it has nearly wiped out many of the best strains of the tree that yield high quality dates," Ben Aichi Bachir, professor of economics at University of Mohamed Khidar Biskra, in Algeria, told SciDev.Net.

He added that "the new natural treatment, if approved after large-scale experiment, could help increase production of dates in the region, while decreasing their production costs". The new approach would be cheaper than current approaches to tackling the disease, he said.

But Nadia Bouguedoura, director of the laboratory of research in arid zones at Algeria's University of Sciences and Technology Houari Boumediene, cautioned that all new approaches to tackling Bayoud disease are still in the preliminary phase.

Bouguedoura said that the treatment is "a serious step on the road for finding a fundamental solution to the disease", but added that the research still "needs to be tested on the ground to confirm its results".

"Until it is approved, genetic control by breeding tree strains resistant to Bayoud disease remains the only valid way [of controlling the disease]," she said.

According to the FAO, the Arab states are the main producers and exporters of dates. Around 70 per cent of the 120 million date palm trees are found in Arab countries, with an annual production value of more than US$1 billion.

It says that "the disease continues to advance relentlessly to the east" and that "it will certainly pose serious problems of human, social and economic nature to other date-producing areas of the world".

SciDev

ICIPE to strengthen fight against fruit fly to boost Kenya mango exports

International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (Icipe) has imported a wasp from Hawaii to help mango farmers at the Coast fight fruit flies. The biggest threat to mango production in Africa is the pest, also known as Fopius Arisanus, Icipe Africa fruit fly programme leader Dr Sunday Ekesi said.

Kenya’s mango exports have been locked out of lucrative global markets such as South Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Japan and US after being infested by the fly. Yield loss on mangoes in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda due to the fruit fly ranges between 30 and 70 per cent depending on the locality, season, and variety of the fruit, he said. A recent study funded by Agricultural Business Development indicated that more than 80,000 households at the Coast engage in mango production with an estimated one million people earning their livelihood from the sector.

“There are more than 18,000 hectares with 1.3 million trees under cultivation,” said Mr Gachanja Githende, a researcher in a past interview. He said the industry is valued at Sh260 million per year. According to Dr Ekesi, Kenya has been grappling with the problem of the mango fruit fly since 2003 when the pest reportedly came along with imported commodities from Sri Lanka. It has since become the single biggest threat to the mango and avocado sub-sectors in the country. “Presence of any trace of the mango fruit fly can lead to the destruction of an entire consignment at the exporters’ costs,” Dr Ekesi said, adding that the pest is also found in 28 other African countries. He said Kenya has since 2008 been losing $2 million (Sh180 million) annually for not exporting avocados to just a single market. “When they fly found its way into Kenya, there was no accompanying natural enemy to contain its multiplication as happens in Sri Lanka,” Dr Ekesi said.

In Sri Lanka, there are two types of insects that feed on the eggs and larvae of the mango fruit fly, keeping the level of damage at a manageable level, says the scientist. However, earlier efforts to import the two insects from Sri Lanka were not successful due to hurdles in exchange of biodiversity such as what Kenya was to offer in return, Dr Ekesi said. This took Icipe scientists to Hawaii in US, which first experienced the mango fruit fly problem in 1940s and imported natural enemies from Asia that they today use to contain the menace. The wasp only needs to be introduced once after, which it breeds and increase its population, so long as they are not killed by pesticides. The wasp was introduced in Kilifi and Malindi last month after trials were conducted in Magadi. Used together with other methods, the pest control will achieve over 90 per cent results, Mr Ekesi said.

Kenya Technical Standing Committee on Import and Export of biological material has already approved the introduction of the insects for commercial use, says Ekesi. After North Coast, the insects will be introduced in South Coast and Eastern province. The trials have established that the pest is effective in controlling mango fruit fry and it does harm other useful organisms, Ekesi said. The Icipe project, which is funded by GIZ of Germany and Biovision, a Swiss Ngo to a tune of 1.5 million euros covers Tanzania, Uganda, Benin, Cameroon and Senegal, Mr Ekesi said.
Market analysts see this development as a major breakthrough for a sector that has not been able to generate sustainable revenues to farmers due to marketing challenges. Projects of value addition have already been started in Hola, where the Coast Development Authority is constructing the first major mango processing plant.
From the survey findings carried out by Institution Development and Management (IDM) Services recently on mango sub sector in the Coast Region, it supports over 80,000 farm families. Information from the survey shows that the population of trees stands over 1.3 million.

Taking all products into consideration, the value of the mango sub-sector at the farm gate level is estimated to be Sh2.6 billion annually, the study said. Dynamics in the mango sub-sector show that there is a general rise in the population of trees exemplified by the number of new entrants in mango farming and the number of trees in the 0 - 3 years category, 178,391, representing 13.3 per cent of the total population. “ It is also evident that the mango sub sector has the potential to drive a substantial proportion of the agricultural economy in the Coast region as 78 per cent of all the trees fall in the productive category,” Gachanja Githende a managing partner of IDM.

Business Daily Africa

Uganda receives grant to boost banana production

 by Andrea M. Besley

Pests and diseases that attack the Matoke banana, one of Uganda's primary food staples, is the focus of a $7.07 million grant awarded to Cornell University (Ithaca, New York) by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

The grant, which is managed by the Agricultural Biotechnology Research Project (ABSPII) in Cornell's Office of International Programs, will run through October 2016.

"The project will allow us to focus on developing the resistance of the East African Highland banana, locally known as matoke, to pests like nematodes and major diseases like Black Sigatoka, fusarium and bacterial wilt," said Frank Shotkoski, Cornell ABSPII director.

The Cornell-led ABSPII program has been working with Uganda's National Agricultural Research Organization (NARO) to improve Uganda's ability to conduct agricultural biotechnology research and develop disease-resistant varieties of matoke since 2005, when Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni launched an initiative to research, develop and add value to the local banana industry.

"Together, we have strengthened molecular, transformation and tissue culture laboratories at the Kawanda Agricultural Biotechnology Center, built a Level II biosafety greenhouse, several screenhouses and confined field trial facilities," said Shotkoski.

"This project increases national capacity in plant breeding and builds on NARO's successful collaboration with USAID and Cornell," said Wilberforce Tushemereirwe, team leader, National Banana Research Programme. "Matoke is a primary staple crop for Uganda and a top priority for NARO. Along with improving varieties of rice and cassava, improving banana is central to food security and income generation in Uganda."

East African Highland bananas feed more than 65 percent of the population in Uganda and are a major source of cash for most farmers. High in potassium and dietary fiber and lower in sugar than desert bananas, they are usually eaten cooked.

Cornell and Ugandan scientists are working to reverse the drastic drop in production of matoke in the traditional banana growing areas of central and southwestern Uganda as a result of diseases and pests.

Most matoke varieties are sterile and produce no seeds. Hence, genetic improvement using traditional cross-pollination techniques is a prolonged and difficult process. Using the tools of agricultural biotechnology, banana varieties can be improved without changing other important traits.

"As a result of USAID/Uganda's sustained and comprehensive support of Uganda's agricultural biotechnology development, Uganda is now the region's most advanced in terms of agricultural biotechnology research, technology transfer and product testing," said Tilahun Zeweldu, ABSPII's East Africa country coordinator. He added that the transgenic crops currently being field tested in Uganda include banana, cassava, corn and cotton.

Cornell University

Hoax email claims South African bananas infected with ''flesh-eating" bacterium

An email claiming that certain bananas from South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province have been poisoned with a flesh-eating bacterium has been clarified as a hoax email by the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

In the email, members of the public are warned not to buy or eat the bananas as they will be infected by a flesh-eating bacterium. It further advises recipients to seek medical attention if they develop a fever after eating the bananas.

The Department of Agriculture's Acting Chief Director for Stakeholder Relations and Communications, Steve Galane, said Monday: "The information we received from the Department of Health is that the banana scare email is a hoax, and any claims regarding poor food safety will be investigated. The department said in its report that at this stage, they don't see any need to do so as they deem this claim to be a hoax."

The hoax email advises those who may have been infected by the "bacterium" to burn their skin around the infection to prevent it from spreading.

Galane said the department strongly advises against burning of the skin. "Deliberately burning your skin could lead to serious injury and permanent damage," he said.

BUA NEWS

Danforth Center is partnering in combating lethal cassava disease

A November 16 press release by FAO calls for an urgent increase in funding, research, training, surveillance and other measures to help African farmers and breeders. In Sub-Saharan Africa, more than 200 million people derive 25 percent of their daily calorie intake from the starchy tuberous roots. In the East African countries of Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Rwanda, Burundi and Malawi, 63 percent of households also sell cassava products to earn income for their families.

CBSD is particularly challenging because its visual symptoms on leaves and stems are subtle and hard to detect. This often means unexpected losses for farmers at harvest, having a devastating impact on families that are dependent on the crop for food security. Since farmers save cassava cuttings for the next crop, the disease is frequently passed on to the next growing season. Around the Lake Victoria region in Uganda, many farmers have been forced to abandon the cultivation of cassava where the disease is severe.

Roots infected with Cassava Brown Streak Disease

“I commend FAO for raising awareness of this critical problem. The need for increased research is clearly necessary if we are to combat this problem in a timely fashion,” said Dr. Claude Fauquet, principal investigator and director of ILTAB at The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, MO.

Researchers at the Danforth Center and two respected partner institutions in Africa, The National Crops Resources Research Institute in Uganda (NaCRRI) and the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), are working to solve this problem for African farmers under the umbrella of a collaborative project called Virus Resistant Cassava for Africa (‘VIRCA’). The VIRCA project has been developing cassava varieties with enhanced resistance to Cassava brown streak disease (CBSD) and Cassava mosaic disease (CMD). “The collaboration with African researchers is showing progress toward helping smallholder farmers combat these devastating diseases,” Dr. Fauquet said.

Researchers recently made progress toward protecting cassava against these diseases in a confined field trial in Uganda using an experimental model cultivar. The field trial was planted in 2010 following approval by the Ugandan National Biosafety Committee. The trial was harvested recently and the data are still being compiled, but initial observations by experienced cassava researchers have made the team optimistic that a virus resistant cassava line can be achieved. Once analyzed, the trial results will point researchers in the right direction for future development of virus-resistant lines of cultivars preferred by East African farmers.

VIRCA researchers are already working to increase resistance in two cultivars that farmers prefer. The first goal is to impart CBSD resistance to a variety called TME 204. This variety is very popular in Uganda and Western Kenya and has good natural resistance to CMD, but is very susceptible to CBSD. “Delivery of CBSD resistant TME 204 is the fastest route to address the CBSD epidemic,” said Dr. Anton Bua, the Ugandan Cassava Research Team Leader in charge of VIRCA field trials and communication in East Africa. The researchers are also working to impart resistance to both CBSD and CMD into Ebwanateraka, a variety called the “Queen of Cassava.”

The VIRCA project is a humanitarian partnership, and when a virus-resistant line has been developed and approved for release, African farmers will be able to freely multiply, save and share their planting materials without royalty costs or technology fees.

“We are grateful for the support of our many partners for this important project. I have witnessed the devastation caused by CMD and CBSD, wiping out entire harvests, leaving many people on the verge of starvation,” said Dr. Fauquet. “Our team is confident that the cassava we develop will improve the lives of millions of people allowing them to not only grow adequate food, but also to increase productivity so they might have enough money left over to educate their children and afford good medical care for malaria and other diseases they face.”

Danforth Center

GM cotton to be commercialized in Kenya by end of 2014

by Ronald Njoroge and David Musyoka

High yielding biotech cotton (Bt) will be commercialized in Kenya by the end of 2014, a Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) scientist has said.

Principal Investigator of Bt cotton in Kenya Dr. Charles Waturu, said in Nairobi that the research institution is currently carrying out field tests on the safety of the three different varieties of Bolgard II, which have been adapted to Kenya’s conditions in readiness for distribution to farmers.

"So far investigations are very promising and therefore an inaugural 40 tonnes of the Bt cotton from South Africa belonging to Monsanto will be shipped into the country for commercial planting by the end of 2014," Waturu said.

Bt variety of cotton incorporates a gene from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis which confers resistance against bollworm. Bollworm is the major pest affecting cotton production in Kenya.

Waturu said that the country will begin with a pilot project of 10 tonnes of the improved variety of cotton which will be grown in the Bura and Hola irrigation schemes and thereafter rolled out to the rest of the farmers in the country.

"The Bt cotton is resistant to one of the greatest threats to the cash crop, Bollworms insect, which discourages cotton growing in the country," Waturu said. He said that farmers therefore don’t have to use as much pesticides as before, which in turn reduces their cost of production and increases profits.

"The KARI centre will also serve as the seed production hub for the East African region," he said.

The local varieties of cotton yields about 800 kg per hectare compared to the new variety that produces 20 percent more in the same area.

According to Waturu, the country produced 21,000 bales of cotton last year compared to a potential of one million bales as farmers are facing numerous production problems.

Central Agriculture Board Chairman Gerishon Nzuva, who has just returned from Burkina Faso on a study tour of the country’s adoption of the Bt cotton, said that the variety is doing well in the West African nation and it could have a positive impact on Kenya’s cotton farmers’ yields.

"While Kenya and Burkina Faso have different growing seasons and conditions, the new variety should improve the cotton sector.''

He also called for good stewardship to manage the gene flow of the new variety. Burkina Faso is the second African country after South Africa to move from trial stage of the Bt cotton to actual farming.

Nzuva said successful commercialization of Bt cotton will provide Kenyan farmers with the opportunity to join farmers from South Africa and Burkina Faso who are already benefiting from commercial growing of Bt cotton.

Commercialisation of Bt cotton seeds is a part of the effort of the government to revive cotton production in the country after it collapsed in the late 1980s.

Cotton production which had touched 70,000 bales (1bale=170 kg) in 1986, touched a low of just 25,000 bales in 2009.

Bt cotton seeds have gained acceptance due to the fact that they do not need spraying of pesticides as well as deliver double the yield. Experts however contend that long use of Bt cotton seeds is harmful to the soil.

KARI says it will control distribution of cotton seeds to avoid sales of spurious seeds.

According to KARI, the country has the potential to grow 260, 000 bales of cotton, by increasing the area of cultivation from 30, 450 hectares at present to 350,000 hectares.

Experts attribute the fall in cotton production in the country to the practice of cultivating recycled cotton seeds, which deliver low productivity and since Bt cotton seeds cannot be replanted, it is expected to eliminate this practice.

Coast Week

Cassava virus on verge of epidemic in East Africa

A new variant of a cassava disease is affecting large parts of East Africa, especially in the area's Great Lakes Region, putting a crucial source of food and income at risk, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

FAO experts say Cassava Brown Streak Disease (CBSD) is on the verge of becoming an epidemic, and have called for an urgent increase in funding, research, training, surveillance and other measures to help farmers and breeders.

The appearance of the disease in previously unaffected areas, and the lack of continued funding for research and development work to address CBSD in the region, have added to the threat already presented by Cassava Mosaic Disease (CMD).

In Rwanda, a surveillance analysis conducted by the National Agricultural Research Institute in 2010 showed a 15.7 percent rate of infection on local varieties and 36.9 percent in improved varieties.

"None of the cassava varieties currently being distributed to farmers seem to be tolerant to the effects of CBSD. We urgently need to get information on the extent and severity of the outbreak, and to support investments to identify disease-tolerant varieties and coping strategies for farmers," said Jan Helsen, leader of FAO's European Union-funded Regional Cassava Initiative in Eastern and Central Africa.

One of the challenges facing those who are trying to stem the spread of CBSD is timely detection of the disease.

"The disease manifests itself in different ways depending on local conditions. In some cases it shows symptoms only on the roots. An apparently healthy plant may be found to have spoiled roots only when harvested, with obvious consequences for food security," Helsen explained.

Cassava can account for as much as a third of the total calorie intake for people in countries such as Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda or DRC.

"Thanks to the foresight of, and the scientific support from, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), efforts are underway to understand the epidemiology of the disease, but more support will be needed for this work, and to select and bring on CBSD-tolerant varieties," Helsen added.

Short-term measures needed to tackle CBSD include stepping up disease surveillance and conducting regular inspections; increasing the sensitization of communities to the threat of CBSD; and using hands-on training for farmers, like FAO's farmer field schools, to introduce community-based practices to prevent the introduction or spread of the disease, such as the removal of infected plants.

Recommended measures also include banning the distribution of infected plants between districts and zones, and, in the event of infection, using coping strategies such as the early harvest of cassava, before symptoms appear and significant damage can be done.

Since around 2006, FAO and the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) have implemented two regional cassava projects, funded respectively by the European Union and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to support vulnerable farmers affected first by CMD and now by CBSD. The projects have provided access to clean, or virus-free, planting material. The projects aim to develop capacity in disease preparedness and strengthen the resilience of farmers to outbreaks of both diseases.




"Fortunately, there are now eight varieties under development by IITA and its national partners in the region which are resistant to Cassava Mosaic Disease and which show some level of tolerance to CBSD. Under existing programme arrangements, these varieties could be made widely available in the next 18-24 months, assuming that resources can be identified to support multiplication and distribution activities," said Helsen.

Helsen says National Cassava Steering Committees have been set up to manage the response to the disease, but they need more time and funds to ensure that some of the CBSD-tolerant varieties in the pipeline can be multiplied and made available across the region.

More extensive surveillance will be carried out in Rwanda again this year, along with Burundi and the DRC, which will give a more complete picture of the occurrence and spread of the disease. To help raise awareness of the impact of the disease, FAO and CRS are currently undertaking a rapid survey on the impact of CBSD on household food security across the region.

FAO

Bacterial wilt destroys 20% of Ugandan district's banana crop

Bacterial wilt disease has wiped out 20% of banana plants in Uganda's  Ntungamo District, and threatens another 60%.

Ntungamo is the third highest producer of matooke in western Uganda, after Isingiro and Bushenyi. More than 90 per cent of the families in the district depend on matooke (plantain) for food, while another 60 per cent depend on it for income. In Uganda banana is not just a desert food, but an important staple crop.

Reports the Monitor, Ntungamo district agricultural officer Moses Sabiti said, “More than 60 per cent of the gardens may get the infection in less than a year if the disease control system is taken for granted.”

African Agriculture

The horrific birth defects linked to tomato pesticides

by Barry Estabrook

The 'Immokalee babies' were born with severe deformities after their mothers were each exposed to pesticides whilst harvesting tomatoes. Barry Estabrook reports on the case that shocked the US

Tower Cabins is a labour camp ...just south of Immokalee, a city in the heart of southwest Florida’s tomato-growing region.

The community of poor migrant labourers is dreary at the best of times, but just before Christmas a few years ago, there were reasons for joy. Three women, all neighbours, were expecting children within seven weeks of each other. But in the lives of tomato workers, there is a fine line between hope and tragedy.

The first baby... was born with an extremely rare condition called tetra-amelia syndrome, which left him with neither arms nor legs.

About six weeks later, a few cabins away, Jesus Navarrete was born with Pierre Robin Sequence, a deformity of the lower jaw. As a result, his tongue was in constant danger of falling back into his throat, putting him at risk of choking to death. The baby had to be fed through a plastic tube.

Two days after Jesus was born, Maria Meza gave birth to Jorge. He had one ear, no nose, a cleft palate, one kidney, no anus, and no visible sexual organs. A couple hours later, following a detailed examination, the doctors determined that Jorge was in fact a girl. Her parents renamed her Violeta. Her birth defects were so severe that she survived for only three days.

In addition to living within one hundred yards of each other, Herrera, Maceda, and Meza had one other thing in common. They all worked for the same company, Ag-Mart Produce, Inc., and in the same vast tomato field.

From the rows of tomatoes where the women were working during the time they became pregnant, the view was not so cheery. A sign at the entry warned that the field had been sprayed by no fewer than thirty-one different chemicals during the growing season. Many of them were rated 'highly toxic,' and at least three, the herbicide metribuzin, the fungicide mancozeb, and the insecticide avermectin, are known to be 'developmental and reproductive toxins,' according to Pesticide Action Network. They are teratogenic, meaning they can cause birth defects.

If they are used, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency mandates 'restricted-entry intervals' (REIs in the jargon of chemical agriculture), the time that must elapse between when pesticides are applied and when workers can go into the fields. In all three cases, the women said they were ordered to pick the fruit in violation of REI regulations.

Although regulations require that handlers of many of these pesticides use protective eyewear, chemical-resistant gloves, rubber aprons, and vapour respirators, the three pregnant women said they had not been warned of the possible dangers of being exposed to the chemicals. They wore no protective gear, unless you count their futile attempts to avoid inhalation by covering their mouths with bandanas.

more...The Ecologist

Banana threatened by old, new pathogens

by Dan Koeppel

Our standard supermarket banana, a variety called Cavendish, may be at the brink of disaster. Chosen for its resistance to a fungal pathogen that wiped out its predecessor, the Gros Michel banana, the popular fruit has long battled a related fungus, which has all but devastated the banana industry in certain parts of the world. Now, it appears the Cavendish variety is facing a new threat—the very same fungal disease that drove Gros Michels off the market.

Cavendish bananas account for about 45 percent of the fruit’s global crop, with an annual export value of US$8.5 billion, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. It was chosen to replace the original Gros Michel banana after a deadly fungal infection, known as Panama disease (Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. Cubense), wiped out much of the world’s banana crop in the first half of the 20th century.

Farmers adopted the Cavendish variety because it appeared to resist the blight, as well as about a dozen other banana diseases that also threaten the worldwide crop. But it wasn’t long before it too started suffering from disease. In the late 1980s, a mysterious malady began to wipe out Asian Cavendish plantations. Soil samples were sent to plant pathologist Randy Ploetz of the University of Florida’s Tropical Research and Education Center, who made the shocking identification: Panama disease was back, in the form of a new strain, which he dubbed Tropical Race 4.

Race 4 is just as virulent to Cavendish as Race 1 was to Gros Michel. The fungus enters the plant via its roots through infected soil or water and spreads via the plant’s vascular system. Once exposed, the plant yellows, and begins to look obviously sick—dried-out, sunken, and sagging. As the disease progresses, brown and purple stripes appear on the trunk, and the plant eventually dies. The disease, however, lives on, spreading via infected soil from plant to plant, plantation to plantation.

Today the disease has spread across Asia, into the Pacific, and to Australia, where it has devastated the island country’s banana industry. Though Race 4 has yet to hit Latin America, where bananas imported to the United States are grown, there’s little doubt it will, said Ploetz.

But it turns out that Race 4 is not the only threat to Cavendish bananas. As banana growers have fled from Race 4, replanting their Cavendish trees in areas only known to harbor Race 1, they quickly learned that Gros Michel’s old foe was now tormenting Cavendish bananas as well.

In 2010, scientists conducting a survey of plants infected in India, which grows and consumes more bananas than any other country in the world, were the first to conclusively identify the presence of Race 1 in the Cavendish banana. They published their findings in Plant Disease that November, and this March, Bioversity International—the global umbrella group for banana research—released a report announcing the finding: Race 1 had begun killing Cavendish plants in plantations around the Theni District of Tamil Nadu, India.

Banana scientists are still trying to determine why some Cavendish are no longer immune to Race 1. Altus Viljoenm, a researcher with the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa, speculates that this new strain of Race 1 may have evolved over time so that it could attack Cavendish.

Other researchers are skeptical of the finding. Ploetz notes that there have been rare cases in which Race 1 has killed individual Cavendish plants when they were already stressed—due to drought conditions, for example, or flooding. “I suspect that this is the same thing,” he said.

But the authors of the Plant Disease paper reported that they had confirmed the finding with laboratory tests on sterile, potted Cavendish. “To our knowledge,” the researchers wrote, “this is the first report of [such] a virulent strain.”

Today, there are no cures, treatments, or even reliable molecular diagnostic tests for either Race, partly due to lack of detailed information on the banana genome, according to Bioversity. Currently, the best available strategy is containment. Ploetz has developed a plan to fight Race 4 if it appears in Latin American plantations, involving the use of strict quarantines on affected plantations to prevent, at least temporarily, the spread of the disease.

But isolating infected plantations is more a stopgap than a solution, Ploetz knows. “It buys time,” he said, but barring any new discoveries, the spread of Panama disease remains inevitable. Ploetz said it’s important that similar agricultural practices be instituted in already affected countries to help prevent the spread to Latin America in the first place.

In the meantime, scientists are working to develop new approaches to quell disaster. Last year, for example, University of Queensland researcher James Dale began the first field tests of a genetically modified Cavendish, which he hopes will provide long-term resistance against Race 4.

Banana companies such as Chiquita and Dole are also reportedly working to develop new varieties. Though genetic modification has long been considered the only way to breed Cavendish, since the variety is completely sterile, recent research conducted in Honduras has revealed that a few Cavendish plants do produce viable seeds. Researchers at the Fundacíon Hondureña de Investigación Agrícola (FHIA) say these non-sterile fruit form the basis of a series of promising hybrids, that can be bred for resistance to the fungi. It will still be at least six years before the new breeds are ready to be brought to market, however, according to a source familiar with the project, or may never appear at all, now that the banana companies are no longer funding the research.

Most banana researchers agree that the real answer—as has been the case with crops like potatoes, apples, and grapes—is to abandon the monoculture that makes the emergence of a disease so devastating. A more diverse banana harvest would allow farmers to isolate susceptible bananas, surrounding them with more resistant varieties. If the solution ends up being a Cavendish stand-in that is resistant to both strains, on the other hand, the predicament of the banana monoculture—with its vulnerability to old, new, and yet-to-be discovered pathogens—would continue.

The Scientist

Insect Shield repellant work wear for disease-prone areas

Many corporations within the oil and gas and mining, forestry and farming industries, in particular, operate in the outdoors where insect-borne disease is a risk to employee health. Insect Shield repellent work wear offers vital protection against a variety of insects that can cause dangerous diseases such as malaria, dengue fever or Lyme disease.

The Insect Shield program is being offered to oil and gas, mining, forestry and farming companies and their subcontractors in locations where insect-borne disease is endemic. Every day, thousands of these company’s employees are exposed to insects that can carry malaria, dengue fever, trypanosomiasis, filariasis, leishmaniasis, and other dangerous diseases. Insect Shield’s long-lasting clothing treatment—proven to last through 70 washings—is an excellent solution for employees living in harm’s way.

The Insect Shield Workplace Safety & Health online store makes protective clothing and gear items available to workers in at-risk locations across the globe. The Insect Shield assortment consists of work wear, professional apparel and accessories—including clothing that also offers sun protection, flame resistance and high visibility—as well as additional protective items such as mosquito nets for use at home.

http://www.insectshield.com/work

Swiss scientist 's insect-control innovation prevents cassava disease

by Isobel Leybold

Insect expert Hans Rudolf Herren’s work in tackling the devastating cassava mealybug crop pest in Africa saved millions of lives and won him the 1995 World Food Prize.

Herren, the subject of a new biography, tells swissinfo.ch how he managed to naturally control the bug using a method that involved shooting the insect’s natural enemy, a type of wasp, from aeroplanes across huge swathes of Africa.

The scientist was only 31 when he took a job in the middle of a crisis: the mealybug was decimating Africa’s staple crop, cassava. After ten years, his radical, non-chemical solution had turned the situation around and averted a famine. He is so far the only Swiss to receive the World Food Prize.

Herren has since continued his research into insects and natural pest control in plants, animals and humans.

In 1998 he set up the Zurich-based Biovision foundation with friends, using money from his various prizes, to promote sustainable organic agriculture in Africa. He is also president of the non-profit Millennium Institute in Washington, which promotes sustainable development.

swissinfo.ch: The biography’s title is: How Hans Rudolf Herren saved 20 million people. How did you do this?

Hans Rudolf Herren: We knew that the mealybug was not of African origin. That’s actually one of the reasons it spread like wildfire after its introduction, because it had no natural enemies. Specialists decided it was a species from the New World and also from somewhere where cassava or any of its wild relatives would occur.

Cassava comes from the Amazon region so it was quite clear that somebody must have transported cuttings or plant material to Africa and brought the pest in. So the plan was to find where this mealybug had come from, check if there was anything useful you could connect to it and then bring this information back to Africa.

swissinfo.ch: So it was a lot of detective work.


H.R.H.: It was. What was interesting was that in all the many years scientists had studied cassava in Latin America, no one had seen the mealybug.

This seemed very strange to me. I thought it may actually be on one of the wild relatives of the crop. Eventually it was found in the border area of Brazil, Paraguay, and Bolivia, interestingly on cultivated cassava.




But no one had seen it there because it was a very low population. In the Americas there are very few mealybugs which meant something was keeping it under control.

swissinfo.ch: You found out that it was a type of wasp.

H.R.H.: Yes, it was a parasitoid wasp [which lays eggs into the bug, eventually killing it]. We had a big factory to produce hundreds and thousands of them and they were packaged in a way that they could be shot out of an airplane travelling at 300 kilometres per hour or more across Africa, from Senegal on one side to Mozambique on the other.

We were careful that it was specific to the cassava mealybug. Thirty years later, no problem has been created and the mealybug is still under control.

swissinfo.ch: Agriculture today still involves the use of many chemicals and even genetic technology. How does your vision of using nature’s tools fit in?


H.R.H.: The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development IAASTD report [published in 2008], of which I was co-chair, made clear that we needed a radical change to agriculture for both developed and developing countries.

The authors decided that we needed to change from this industrial, energy intensive agriculture and from the very traditional agriculture that has a low input and productivity towards a multifunctional, agro-ecological, organic type of agriculture which is self-regenerating.

Biovision was almost ahead of that report by promoting an ecologically-based agriculture, which is in harmony with the system, which doesn’t fight the environment but works with it, and which will produce enough to nourish everybody by 2050. I’m convinced we can do it. The question is can we actually implement it now?

Swiss Info

Cattle plague Rinderpest declared eradicated

by Steve Baragona

Scientists are declaring victory over a deadly animal disease that cattle herders around the world have dreaded for millennia.

Rinderpest becomes the second disease in all of human history to be successfully eradicated, after smallpox.

It played a role in the fall of Rome, the French Revolution and paved the way for the colonization of Africa, historians say. Where rinderpest struck, cattle death was swift and often total...the effects were devastating for those who depended on cattle for their livelihoods.

When rinderpest first hit sub-Saharan Africa in the late 19th century, it killed 80 to 90 percent of the region’s cattle and triggered severe famines.

At its widest extent, in the 1920s, rinderpest stretched from northern Europe to southern Africa and east to the Philippines.

This age-old plague was finally tamed by a vaccine first developed in the 1960s. Large-scale, coordinated, village-by-village vaccination campaigns reduced the disease to a few pockets. But nomadic cattle herders in East Africa presented a particular challenge.

“Animals move from one region to another, and very often across national boundaries," said the Inter-African Bureau for Animal Resources’ Henry Wamwayi. "And therefore, transnational animal diseases can only be controlled if there is cooperation among countries.”

The FAO spearheaded a global eradication program beginning in 1994.

The last known case was in Kenya in 2001. Last year, the country celebrated its certification as rinderpest-free.

But because wild animals also carry the disease, it took several years of intensive worldwide surveillance to be sure rinderpest was truly gone.

Rinderpest becomes only the second disease besides smallpox to be found nowhere on earth but frozen away in a few laboratory vials, making the world a little safer for cattle and the people who depend on them.

VOA

E.coli outbreak in Germany poses questions for organic farming

by Kate Kelland

The warm, watery organic growing environment suspected as the source of a deadly E.coli outbreak in Germany may produce delicious, nutritious bean sprouts, but is also an ideal breeding ground for the dangerous bacteria.

Bean sprouts are often prime suspects in E.coli outbreaks around the world, and health experts say it is no surprise the hunt for source of the lethal strain that has killed 22 people and made more than 2,200 sick has led to an organic bean farmer.

Some say the case raises questions about the future of organic growing methods.

"Bean sprouts are very frequently the cause of outbreaks on both sides of the Atlantic. They're very difficult to grow hygienically and you have to be so careful not to contaminate them," said Paul Hunter, a professor of public health at Britain's University of East Anglia. "And organic farms, with all that they entail in terms of not using ordinary chemicals and non-organic fertilizers, carry an extra risk."

Hunter said he personally bought organic fruits and vegetables, but steered clear of organic raw salad foods "for precisely that reason."

The original source of the contamination in Germany is highly likely to be manure, farm slurry or faeces of some sort, since the Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli or STEC found in this outbreak are known to be able to lurk in cattle guts.

The farmer at the center of Germany's outbreak has said he used no fertilizers, but scientists say the contamination may have been on or in the bean seeds themselves, in the water used to grow them, or have come from a worker handling the beans. And once the bug was in, the conditions may have been perfect for it to reproduce.

"Bean sprouts are quite often grown at high temperatures, around 37 degrees (Celsius), and that is also the optimum growing temperature for E. coli, so it would allow any traces of it to multiply quickly," said Brendan Wren, a microbiology professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. "It's a 'perfect storm' scenario. It's rare and unlikely, but if all of these events happen then the produce could rapidly become contaminated."

Food poisoning cases linked to bean sprouts are not new. In the United States in 1997, investigations into an outbreak of E. coli traced it back to alfalfa beans harvested in Idaho and then used for sprouting.

Stephen Smith, a lecturer in clinical microbiology at Ireland's Trinity College Dublin, said previous research in laboratories has shown that a type of E. coli that causes the life-threatening complication Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome, or HUS, can bind to alfalfa sprouts. HUS often leads to kidney failure and has been one of the main causes of death and serious illness in the German outbreak.

"E. coli can stick tightly to the surface of seeds needed to make sprouts and ... lay dormant on the seeds for months," Smith said. Then, during germination, "the population of bugs can expand 100,000-fold."

The suspicions about bean sprouts are strengthened by the pattern of infections, which are all in or linked to Germany, and by the distinctive age and gender profile of the victims.

In Germany and Europe, just as in the 1997 U.S. outbreak, most of those infected have been women aged between 20 and 50, a group not usually hard hit by E.coli outbreaks from other sources, which tend to harm children and old people.

Young women, more than other groups, tend to eat raw bean sprouts, believing them to be healthy, scientists say.

"The big issue will be for the bean sprout industry, particular the organic side," said Hunter. "If you're growing these non-organically, you can separate them from feces in a way that is problematic if you are using organic production methods. Organic production of salad stuffs just may not be as safe as non-organic methods."

Reuters

Deadly fungus threatens Latin American cocoa crop

by Jean Guerrero

Cocoa farmers from Brazil to Mexico are scrambling to protect their crops from a potentially devastating fungus that could crimp supplies of the chocolate ingredient.

Frosty pod rot, spread by spores carried by wind and human contact, is making its way through Latin America, bringing back memories of a blight that devastated Brazil's cocoa industry two decades ago.

The spread of the disease could add to worries about the supply of cocoa and send futures prices even higher. Futures touched $3,826 a metric ton on IntercontinentalExchange earlier this year when political turmoil in Ivory Coast, which provides one-third of the world's cocoa, threatened global supplies.

The cocoa bean is native to Latin America, but the nexus of cocoa production shifted to West Africa in the early 1900s as infestations such as frosty pod rot devastated Latin America's cocoa horticulture.

In 2005, the disease arrived in Mexico, the sixth-largest producer in the region and the farthest north the fungus can possibly spread. Chocolate companies such as Nestlé SA say the industry has finally touched bottom, but that the outlook can only improve as all of the countries affected in the region collaborate to find solutions.

A woman spreads cocoa beans to dry in Venezuela. The outbreak of frosty pod rot has raised concerns about the Latin American cocoa crop, stirring worries about supplies and pushing up futures prices.

Before the advent of frosty pod rot, "the trees were so filled up with cocoa fruit that I could stand behind one and you couldn't see me," says Felícito Domínguez-Sánchez, owner of 37 acres of cocoa trees in the southern state of Tabasco.

Now, only three of the round, green pods protrude from the trunk of one of his trees. Every day, Mr. Domínguez-Sánchez enters his plantation daily with his machete to hack off "sick" plants, which he identifies by the fine, white powder coating their surfaces, and buries them underneath damp leaves covering the ground.

International researchers and Latin American governments say the best defense against the fungus would be the use of cocoa varieties resistant to the disease. Governments and food companies such as Nestlé SA and Mars Inc. have invested heavily in researching cocoa's genetics and breeding, but the research has yet to produce disease-resistant varieties.

Some experts blame abnormal temperatures and rainfall for helping to spread frosty pod rot and warn that the trend is putting global supplies in jeopardy.

"We don't have a dike to hold back the ocean of disease pressure," said Howard-Yana Shapiro, global head of plant science and research for Mars.

The fungus hasn't yet arrived in Brazil, the largest producer in Latin America and the fifth-largest world-wide, but industry leaders there are working with research institutions just in case the disease leaks through the border with Peru, where it has been detected.

The international research center on tropical agriculture, Costa Rica-based Catie, has developed six varieties that are tolerant of the fungus and is sharing them with other countries. A tolerant variety is one that sees less damage to its production than the average plant; a resistant variety's production isn't affected by the fungus at all.

In Mexico, government officials have identified nine native cocoa species that show some tolerance. Some of these species produce the white seeds that can be made into "fine" cocoas, which are valued above conventional varieties. Fine cocoas originate mostly from Latin America.The fungus, however, has forced many producers out of the industry. Mexico, the 12th largest cocoa producer in the world, has seen its production fall by half since 2005, when the disease arrived from Guatemala.

Frosty pod rot isn't the only disease that has wreaked havoc on cocoa production in Latin America, but its arrival was what brought the region's industry to its knees. Two decades ago, a fungus called witches' broom appeared in Bahia, Brazil, and cut the state's production by 70% in 10 years. In the harvest that ended in April, Bahia produced 153,600 metric tons of cocoa, down from the record 397,400 tons seen in the 1986-1987 season before the witches' broom fungus appeared.

"The impact of witches' broom was very serious in Brazil, but if the frosty pod rot arrives, the effect would be catastrophic," says Wilberth Phillips, head of the research center Catie. Costa Rica's cocoa production dropped 72%, and exports virtually came to a halt within five years of the arrival of the disease in 1978, according to the center's statistics. In Honduras, production fell to 1,200 metric tons in 2005 from 4,500 metric tons in 1997. Thousands of acres throughout the region have been abandoned or switched to other crops.

Protecting cocoa crops from this disease is proving difficult. The disease is nearly impossible to contain in humid areas such as in Mexico's southeastern Tabasco state, producers say.

Some in the industry are worried that the frosty pod rot could make its way to West Africa, which supplies more than half of the world's cocoa.

With cocoa futures around $3,000, more than double the five-year average, producers are traveling to other countries to search for better varieties of the plants. But this could contribute to the spread of the disease if the producers travel with clothes or plants contaminated with spores.

"The procedures they have in a lot of African countries are not as sophisticated or developed for keeping that sort of [disease] out," says Michael Segal, information officer for the International Cocoa Organization, or ICCO.

In Mexico, the most recent place to suffer the arrival of the fungus, the Agriculture Ministry aims to increase cocoa yields from 357 pounds per acre to 1,784 pounds per acre with a program that subsidizes the purchase of plants that have been bred to be disease-tolerant. Last year, 1.5 million of these plants were produced with the help of the program, and this year Mexico aims to produce two million.

But many producers say they can't obtain the bank credits required for participation in the program. "We're told we don't have enough guarantees," said Mr. Domínguez-Sánchez, who added that his bank has told him that he doesn't have proper proof of ownership for his property, which is cooperatively owned. Many farmers in Mexico similarly involved in cooperatives face problems meeting bank requirements for loans.

Government officials say they are working to encourage banks to lend money to farmers so they can buy the disease-tolerant cocoa plants.

Wall Street Journal

Disease hits wheat crops in Africa, Mideast

Aggressive new strains of wheat rust disease have decimated up to 40 percent of harvests in some regions of north Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and the Caucasus, researchers have said.

The countries most affected are Syria and Uzbekistan, with Egypt, Yemen, Turkey, Iran, Morocco, Ethiopia and Kenya also hit hard, they reported at a scientific conference in Aleppo, Syria.

"These epidemics increase the price of food and pose a real threat to rural livelihoods and regional food security," Mahmoud Solh, director general of the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), said in a statement.

In some nations hit by the blight, wheat accounts for 50 percent of calorie intake, and 20 percent of protein nutrition.

"Wheat is the cornerstone for food security in many of these countries," said Hans Braun, director of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), near Mexico City, singling out Syria.

"Looking at the political and social situation, what they don't need is a food crisis," he told AFP by phone.

Wheat rust is a fungal disease that attacks the stems, grains and especially the leaves of grains including wheat, barley and rye.

Several factors have contributed to the rapid spread of the new disease strains, known as stem rust and stripe rust, experts say.

Global warming and increased variability of rainfall have weakened the plants even as these emerging rust strains have adapted to extreme temperatures not seen before.

"To combat the problem, farmers in these regions need to adopt new varieties of wheat that have durable resistance to both stem and stripe rust," said Ronnie Coffman, a professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and vice chairman of the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative.

"All of these countries have under-invested in research and preparation for this kind of scenario," he said by telephone from the United States.

While some resistant breeds are in the pipeline, national and international development efforts must be stepped up if they are to deliver in time to make a difference, he said.

New wheat varieties must also have improved yield performance, drought tolerance and regional suitability, he added.

Most of the countries affected have only meagre capacity for research and development.

More than 100 scientists and policymakers from 31 countries are meeting at the International Wheat Stripe Rust Symposium to discuss strategies for slowing the spread of disease.


AFP