Lecture 8: Plant Diseases II

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

1:20 PM
• Wheat
o Staple of 35% of the world population
o It provides more calories and protein in the world's diet than anything else
o First cultivated 10,000 years ago
o Romans had a god for wheat rust
• Wheat Rust
o Disease that attacks the plant itself
o Has enormous effect on ability to grow wheat
o UG99
• Is resistant to all the ways we know how to fight wheat rust
o Multiple kinds of wheat rust
o The lifecycle of wheat rust is complicated
• It takes one kind of spore to infect wheat, and another one to begin the lifecycle
• Sexual recombination of the wheat rust occurs on barberry shrubs
• The fungus completes its sexual cycle on the Barberry plant
§ Invasive species in US
§ Spiky
o Rust fungi are obligate parasites
• They can only grow on their plant host
• Mycelium grows on the plant; the fungus makes windblown spores…
o Rust Sex
• The rust spore has two cells with basidia growing out
§ This will produce basidiospores
• Sex introduce variation and overcome plant defenses
• Sexual spores don’t survive if they cant find barberry plants to infect
o 1953 Epidemic
• Rust spores produced in Kansas (S. US)
• Rained down across N dakota and minnesota at a rate of over 8 million spores per
hectacre
• The result was the loss of 40% of the spring wheat crop
o Wheat rust cannot overwinter in crops in the north, but they can in crops in the south
o Spores can get carried by the wind and shooting up north and infecting and producing more
spores as they go > can go up to canada from initial location of US south
o Rust spores
• Have think orange coat to prevent getting zapped by UV light and so prevent drying
out
• 1.6 pounds of spores per acre
o How to control wheat rust
• Fungicides work, but its very expensive and take multiple treatments
§ The value of wheat crops doesn’t support purchase of fungicide
• Main strategy was to breed wheat varieties that resist wheat rust
§ USDA has a department devoted to wheat diseases
• Removing barberry bushes can help manage wheat rust
§ Pretty effective at slowing wheat rust
§ There was a rust busters club
o Norman Borlaug
• "father of the green revolution"
 • Bred new wheat varieties that were high-yield, hardy and resistant to disease
• Increased yield by 6x in developing countries
• Save over a billion people from starvation
• Won Nobel Peace prize and world peace prize
• He had a mission to save people
o We cant totally stop fungi from evolving
o Rust Fungi in general
• Very large group of fungi related to mushroom (belong in basidiomycota)
• Don’t always look orange
• They all occur on plants
• There are very many species of rust fungi
§ Each can only attack 1 or 2 plant hosts
§ They belong to phylum basidiomycota
• Complex life cycles
§ Need to make up to 5 different kinds of spores
• Cedar-Apple rust
• Coffee
o Is among the most valuable agricultural commodity in international trade
o Around the world: 2.25 billion cups a day
o Coffee grows in warm places
• Supports the economy of many developing countries
o Rust fungus attacks coffee leaves
• If the fungus kills all the leaves, then no coffee berries will be produced
• Coffee originated in Ethiopia and Yemen
• This fungus made its first appearance in Sri Lanka and India
• By the mid 1980s it conquered every place in the world where coffee was grown
• Coffee rust causes defoliation
o Shade grown coffee
• Coffee grown in the shade of big trees
• Pruned shade trees let the sun through to prevent rust on coffee plants below
o New coffee variety called "Castillo" resists rust, but it’s a low value coffee
o Switch in central america from coffee to cocoa
o Where did coffee rust come from
• We know it hit india and sri lanka
• Cant find anywhere but cultivated coffee plants
• We don’t know what the alternate host for coffee rust is
• Mystery of the orange goo
o In alaska
o Took a full year to figure out what this was
o Ended up being the spores of a rust fungus
• Movie
o Researchers gather every year to see wheat fields in area where UG99 is common
o UG99 causes crop losses and famines
o The entire stem of the wheat can be affect
o Also called black rust because after time the fungus will turn black
o This could cause wheat plants to yield little or no grain at all
o 1998, a new stem rust immune to re