Meeting the Challenge of Yellow Rust in Cereal Crops - ICARDA

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Foreword
Wheat is grown on roughly 230 million hectare worldwide, with 650 million
tonne of grain produced each year. It is the main food staple in many
countries, particularly in Central Asia, West Asia and North Africa (the
CWANA region), which has the world’s highest per capita wheat
consumption. Wheat is grown on 50 million hectare across CWANA, but
average productivity in the region is only 1.5 t/ha, half the global average.
Wheat has its origin in West Asia, most likely in the Fertile Crescent, where
productivity can be very high. However, the region also suffers from heavy
periodic incidence of diseases and insect pests that cause heavy crop losses.
The most important wheat diseases in CWANA are rusts, mildew, foliar
blights and bunts. Among the rusts, yellow (stripe) rust is the most serious in
CWANA, and perhaps globally. The world's wheat supplies are under threat
from fast-mutating new strains of stripe [yellow] rust. The new strains
(pathotypes) attack hitherto resistant varieties. They are also spreading to new
areas as they have adapted to higher temperatures.
Millions of tonnes of wheat have been lost due to pandemics of stripe rust
across CWANA countries. In the 2009–10 season, an epidemic of stripe rust
swept across West and Central Asia. Syria lost nearly half of its wheat harvest
in 2010. The growing threat to food security, affecting countries in CWANA
that are already partially dependent on food imports, is being met with new
research initiatives, led by international agencies such as ICARDA, CIMMYT
and FAO in collaboration with National Agricultural Research Systems
(NARS).
The first steps in combating stripe rust will be to document the geographical
extent and scale of losses; share research findings and breeding material; and
develop regional, multi-country, multi-institution partnerships for disease
surveillance, monitoring and control.
In the last 10 years, ICARDA and its partner NARS have organized 4
international stripe rust conferences, held in Iran, Pakistan, Uzbekistan and
Turkey. Hundreds of stripe rust scientists presented their findings, and shared
ideas and experiences to help develop effective, broad-based strategies to
reduce disease losses, predict future outbreaks, and restrict the spread of new
stripe rust pathotypes. This publication summarizes the findings of the last
three conferences. It includes scientific papers and abstracts covering various
aspects of stripe rust monitoring, management, resistance breeding, chemical
control and epidemiology.