India and China, the world?s two largest wheat growing nations, are vulnerable to rust diseases. An estimated 85% of wheat in production is susceptible to stem rust attacks which can turn fields of wheat into blackened stubble with no grains at all.
Stem rust can cause farmers to lose entire crops, but a second rust disease is causing severe losses worldwide. Like stem rust, yellow rust (also known as stripe rust) has become an immediate threat with the emergence of new, highly aggressive strains that knock out genetic resistance in many popular varieties of wheat.
Now, there is a technology to prevent rust attack on wheat. Scientists have developed a global cereal rust monitoring system dubbed ?Rust-Tracker,? where smart phones and tablets are used to collect and submit field data that generates ?risk maps?. Researchers use the maps to determine the path of virulent strains of rust, assess the severity of the threat and prepare farmers to resist it. Much of the world?s wheat varieties are highly susceptible to stem rust attacks and the losses are estimated at $16.4 billion on a production level on 117 million tonnes.
Working closely with technical support from Hyderabad-based Sathguru Management Consultants, Indian scientists at Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) have developed a comprehensive surveillance data network for South Asia that is being deployed in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Pakistan to track rust diseases of wheat. The use of the information technology solution developed by Sathguru, to track rust pathogens, generates reliable information for rust surveillance in key wheat growing regions throughout the world.
?The use of this new information technology helps partners generate nation-specific information that is extremely useful in tracking rust and initiating rust mitigation,? Kannan Vijayaraghavan, director, Sathguru and regional coordinator of the Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat (DRRW) project said.
Sathguru developed a country-specific web-based data capture tool box. This software and its accompanying data base can be hosted in an nationally-approved database that will capture the rust surveillance information received as per the prescribed format, store it for multi-dimensional analysis like sorting of data, grading of data, projecting the entered data in graphical form, making reports as per need for any meeting or reporting to national authorities. The tool box will also have a feature to send alert messages for rust pathologists to enter the surveillance data.
?We are significantly closer to our goal of protecting the global wheat crop from rust diseases,? Ronnie Coffman, Cornell professor of plant breeding, principal investigator, and Director of the Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat (DRRW) project and vice-chair of the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI), who was in Hyderabad, said. The DRRW project is an international project to devise and implement a globally-coordinated action plan to address the Ug99 rust menace in wheat. The project is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) as well as UKAID-Department of International Development (DFID) and led by Cornell University.
Wheat crop losses in the country could affect global food security. Threats to India?s wheat crop or any significant decline in production could have an impact on global food security, according to Coffman. Incidentally, the ICAR will also host the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI) technical workshop in New Delhi, from August 19-22 . The 2013 BGRI workshop will celebrate 50 years of Norman E Borlaug?s contributions to the Green Revolution in the country and also those who made India self-sufficient
in wheat production. Borlaug received a Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for fighting stem rust and developing varieties of semi-dwarfing wheat that saved millions of South Asians from famine.