I too thought I remembered a blight angle re: Sherman's Planet as contributing to the famine in the original "Tribbles". I may be wrong, or I may have an element of an earlier novelization rattling around in my skull. Perhaps one of the Blish collections contributing to that.

So long as we don't let private companies keep IP control over the results of the counter-research responding to this blight threat, such that we don't have any more Percy Schmeiser-type situations...