Red Menace: Stop the Ug99 Fungus Before Its Spores Bring Starvation

I usually keep to Dallas Morning News stories, but here's a fascinating piece in Wired about the Ug99 Fungus that threatens the world's wheat crops.

This distinct new race of P. graminis, dubbed Ug99 after its country of origin (Uganda) and year of christening (1999), is storming east, working its way through Africa and the Middle East and threatening India and China. More than a billion lives are at stake. “It’s an absolute game-changer,” says Brian Steffenson, a cereal-disease expert at the University of Minnesota who travels to Njoro regularly to observe the enemy in the wild. “The pathogen takes out pretty much everything we have.”