A WHEAT disease that could destroy most of the world’s main wheat crops could strike south Asia’s vast wheat fields two years earlier than research had suggested, leaving millions to starve. The fungus, called Ug99, has spread from Africa to Iran, and may already be in Pakistan.

Plant leaves and surfaces are teeming with microbial life, yet the insects that feed on plants lack adaptive immune systems to fend off any intruding microorganisms they eat along with their greens. Now research published in the online open access journal, BMC Biology shows how food-borne bacteria affect an insect’s immune system.

Disease resistance genes from three different grass species have been combined in the world’s first ‘trigenomic’ chromosome, which can now be used to breed disease resistant wheat varieties.

The full weight of a consortium of world-leading scientists – including those who helped decode the entire human genome – is being thrown at a parasitic worm less than 1mm long.

Scientists have made a key discovery into the genetics of the bacteria that causes blackleg, an economically damaging disease of potatoes, that could lead to new ways to fight the disease.

At least, that’s the picture being painted in the first waves of data being reaped from the genome sequence of the fungal plant pathogen, Fusarium graminearum. The sequencing has provided scientists a road map to someday combat a fungus that infects wheat and barley crops, rendering them unusable.

Botanists at Oregon State University have discovered that a single plant gene can cause resistance to one disease at the same time it produces susceptibility to a different disease – the first time this unusual phenomenon has ever been observed in plants.

Enjoying your August vacation? Well, (as they say in the summer movies) there’s a killer in the woods. Its strike has been consistently quiet, sudden, and deadly. Unknowingly, we have all been playing into its hands… But put down that rock -- you personally are not in any danger. It’s the woods themselves that are getting axed and you may be an accomplice.

The first all-African genetically modified crop plant with resistance to the severe maize streak virus (MSV), which seriously reduces the continent’s maize yield, has been developed by scientists from the University of Cape Town and PANNAR PTY Ltd, a South African seed company.

The latest on the rapid spread of citrus greening within Florida and its potential to spread into California and other citrus growing areas will be presented during a news conference on plant diseases and issues that are of importance to California's economy and agriculture. The news conference will be held Monday, July 30 at 11 a.m. PST at the Town and Country Resort and Convention Center in San Diego, CA.

A new, highly destructive strain of wheat stem rust is continuing to evolve and has the potential to devastate wheat production worldwide, say plant pathologists with The American Phytopathological Society (APS).

Brown rot is one of the most economically and ecologically important diseases affecting California's $100 million prune industry, say plant pathologists with The American Phytopathological Society (APS).