Latest Fusarium Stories

Preliminary research on Fusarium, a group of fungi that includes devastating pathogens of plants and animals, shows how these microbes travel through the air. Researchers now believe that with improvements on this preliminary research, there will be a better understanding about crop security, disease spread, and climate change. Engineers and biologists are steering their efforts towards a new aerobiological modeling technique, one they think may assist farmers in the future by providing an...

Climate change is likely to make plants more vulnerable to infectious disease, which will threaten crop yield and impact on the price and availability of food. Dr Adrian Newton, presenting his work at the Society for General Microbiology's Spring Conference in Harrogate, explains how exploiting diversity in crops is the best option to improve food security in a changing climate.Pest and disease management has helped double food production in the last 40 years, but 10-16% of the global harvest...

An international team of mycologists and ecologists studying Atlantic sea turtles at Cape Verde have discovered that the species is under threat from a fungal infection which targets eggs. The research, published in FEMS Microbiology Letters, reveals how the fungus Fusarium solani may have played a key role in the 30-year decline in turtle numbers."In the past 30 years we have witnessed an abrupt decline in the number of nesting beaches of sea turtles worldwide," said Drs. Javier...

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists in Athens, Georgia, have reported for the first time that several species of Aspergillus niger, or black aspergilli, are capable of infecting corn and peanuts as endophytes. The researchers also showed that, under laboratory conditions, these species produced mycotoxins.Using a molecular procedure they developed, USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) research leader Charles Bacon, microbiologist Dorothy Hinton, and Edwin Palencia, a graduate...

Individual kernels of wheat and barley can be quickly evaluated for resistance to a damaging scab disease by using near infrared light (NIR) technology, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) study conducted in support of a program to safeguard these valuable grain crops.NIR light is partially absorbed by the kernels, creating a type of "fingerprint" scientists can use to detect fusarium head blight, also known as "scab," or its related mycotoxin, called...

In the battle against soil fungi that discolor horseradish roots and can render the entire crop unsellable, University of Illinois researcher Mohammad Babadoost found that subjecting the roots to hot water before planting was most effective in killing the pathogen in propagative root stocks.The final recipe: submerge in water heated to 47 degrees Centigrade for 20 minutes.Babadoost was looking for a reliable, non-chemical method to control Verticillium and Fusarium "“ soil-borne fungi...

Asian wheat may offer novel genes for shoring up the defenses of U.S. varieties against Fusarium graminearum fungi that cause Fusarium head blight (FHB) disease.According to Agricultural Research Service (ARS) plant molecular biologist Guihua Bai, the FHB resistance found in today's U.S. wheat varieties is primarily based on the Chinese wheat variety Sumai 3 and a few other sources. But there's concern that FHB-causing species of F. graminearum will overcome these resistant sources. In...

Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists have developed an efficient and cost-effective method to speed up the breeding of scab-resistant barley cultivars, thus improving crop quality for small-grain breeders in the Northern Plains.Shiaoman Chao, a molecular geneticist at the ARS Cereal Crops Research Unit in Fargo, N.D., collaborated with scientists from North Dakota State University and the University of Minnesota in the study.Chao used genomics information provided by the breeders to...

Contact lens wearers may remember headlines from a few years ago about molds that can live on the lenses and may cause debilitating eye infections.What lens users may not have known: Agricultural Research Service (ARS) experts at the agency's National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research in Peoria, Ill., did the detective work necessary to precisely identify the Fusarium molds responsible for what was then a newly emerging medical problem worldwide.The researchers derived the correct...

CSIRO researchers have identified wheat and barley lines resistant to Crown Rot "“ a disease that costs Australian wheat and barley farmers $79 million in lost yield every year.Crown Rot, which is a chronic problem throughout the Australian wheat belt, is caused by the fungus Fusarium.Dr Chunji Liu and his CSIRO Plant Industry team in Brisbane are using sophisticated screening methods to scan over 2400 wheat lines and 1000 barley lines from around the world to find the ones resistant the...