Why the heck isn't this bigger news??

[dianeduane]

It's not quite like finding yourself stuck in the plot of No Blade of Grass. But bad enough.

Billions at risk from wheat super-blight

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.

...Argh.

Comments

[starkruzr.livejournal.com]

Isn't this how The Trouble with Tribbles got started? Blight on someone's crop required importation of massive amounts of quadrotriticale?

I just started reading the first three Rihannsu books, btw. CURSE YOU I CANNOT PUT THEM DOWN. ::fistshake::

[dduane.livejournal.com]

Re the tribbles: You know, I don't remember if there was a blight. But there seemed to be a consensus that this strain of triticale was needed because it would work best on that planet. Or something.

Re the books: Snicker-snicker-snicker-snicker. I love it when that happens. (runs off)

[dewline.livejournal.com]

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...

[(Anonymous)]

The nice, handy PDF says:
LURRY
(interrupting)
Captain, quadro-triticale is the only Earth grain that will grow on Sherman’s Planet. We have several tons of it here on the station, and it’s very important that that grain reach Sherman’s Planet safely. Mr. Baris thinks that Klingon agents may try to sabotage it—

The word "blight" wasn't found when I searched.
----
Peter Murray

[dewline.livejournal.com]

I suspected my memory was faulty. Thanks much. I stand corrected.