ISLAMABAD, Nov 24: The World Bank (WB) has warned that Ug99, a new race of deadly stem rust, which has dramatically emerged recently, is expected to attack the wheat growing areas of South Asia.

The stem rust also called ‘Punccina graminis tritici’ is catastrophic because it can cause an almost complete loss of crops in an area. Ug99 is expected to be carried by the wind through the Middle East to wheat growing areas of South Asia and possibly to Europe and America, says the bank’s World Development Report - Agriculture for Development 2008, released here on Saturday.

Punjab and Sindh are the main growers of the major crop in Pakistan.

The report states that Ug99 first appeared in 1999 in Uganda and was now widespread in wheat growing areas of Kenya and Ethiopia. This year, it has been found in Yemen.

“Given the narrow base of genetic resistance to the disease in existing varieties of wheat, the spread of Ug99 could cause devastating losses in some of the world’s breadbaskets,” the report warned.

The last major outbreak of stem rust in the United States was in 1953 and 1954 and it caused 40 per cent yield loss worth $3 billion in today’s dollars.

The WB is of the view that through a new international effort plant breeders and pathologists should be able to avoid global epidemic by screening for resistant genotypes and getting them into farmers’ fields. The report says that in Asia overcoming widespread poverty requires confronting widening rural-urban income disparities. Asia’s fast growing economies remain home to 600 million rural people living in extreme poverty, and despite rural urban migration, rural poverty will remain dominant for several more decades.