Cornell University has been chosen to lead a $40 million global project to combat deadly strains of Ug99, an evolving fungal disease that affects wheat and poses a dangerous threat to global food security, particularly in the poorest nations of the developing world.
The five-year grant was provided by the United Kingdom's Department of International Development ($15 million) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation ($25 million), and is intended to support efforts to identify new stem rust resistant genes in wheat, improve surveillance, and multiply and distribute rust-resistant wheat seed to farmers and their families.
First discovered in 1998 in Uganda, the original Ug99 has been found also in Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan, Yemen and Iran. A Global Cereal Rust Monitoring System, housed at the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, suggests strains of Ug99 are on the march, threatening major wheat-growing areas of Southern and Eastern Africa, the Central Asian Republics, the Caucasus, the Indian subcontinent, South America, Australia and North America.
The grant will allow Cornell to build on international efforts to combat many varieties of stem rust, but particularly Ug99 and its variants. Among the university's partners are national research centers in Kenya and Ethiopia, and scientists at two international agricultural research centers that focus on wheat, the Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), in Syria.
FAO and advanced research laboratories in the United States, Canada, China, Australia, Denmark and South Africa also collaborate on the project. The Cornell project now involves more than 20 leading universities and research institutes throughout the world, and scientists and farmers from more than 40 countries.
