ITHACA (AP) -- Cornell University is leading a $40 million global research project to combat a wheat disease that threatens food security worldwide, especially in the poorest nations of the developing world.
The project is funded by the British government and the Gates Foundation. Cornell and its partners will use the grant to ramp up surveillance for the deadly wheat pathogen known as "Ug99," and provide farmers with resistant wheat varieties.
The pathogen causes a new form of stem rust that threatens wheat crops. It has been spreading rapidly in Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan, Yemen and Iran. Researchers say it threatens major wheat-growing areas of southern and eastern Africa, central Asia, India, South America, Australia and North America.
In the 1950s, a fatal strain of wheat stem rust invaded North America and ruined 40 percent of the spring wheat crop. Plant scientists developed high-yield rust-resistant varieties that helped launch the Green Revolution. Now, they're again developing new varieties that are resistant to the deadly new strain of wheat stem rust.
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