Study: Plant Pandemic Could Cause Billions To Go Hungry

At a time when unpredictable weather patterns, worldwide pandemics, and altering weather patterns already pose a threat to global hunger, a new problem is emerging on the international scene that might cause billions of people to go hungry.

According to a group of scientists, a pandemic of blast disease is posing a threat to wheat, one of the most important food crops. They discovered that a clonal lineage recently spread across Asia and Africa as a result of two consecutive imports of the South American wheat blast fungus.

The study found that yield losses brought on by pests and diseases in wheat typically exceed 20%. Wheat is currently under threat from a growing blast pandemic caused by the ascomycete fungus Magnaporthe oryzae, a powerful and persistent hazard to key grain cereals that could lead to crop loss.

The illness first surfaced in Brazil in 1985, but reports of it have also come from Zambia and Bangladesh in recent years. In the Bangladesh outbreak of 2016, for instance, there was an average yield loss of 51%.

The study’s authors also stated that the occurrence of wheat blasts on three continents with climatic conditions that are highly favorable to its spread is unprecedented and poses a very serious threat to global food security. This threat is made even worse by the unprecedented twin challenges of climate change and armed conflict in important agricultural regions.

According to Professor Nick Talbot of the Sainsbury Laboratory, one of the study’s authors, “Only by truly understanding the enemy and the pathogens that cause these diseases will we be able to truly preventively control them”.

He said, “We must anticipate that plant diseases will spread around the world as a result of the effects of climate change and globalization, and we must be prepared for them”.

“We must be proactive rather than reactive; we must anticipate how diseases will spread and plan accordingly”, he added.