RAWALPINDI, March 5: The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations has asked the authorities of Pakistan and five other wheat-producing countries, located east of Iran, to be on high alert, following a report that a new and virulent wheat fungus has moved to major wheat-growing areas in Iran.

The FAO says the detection of the wheat-rust fungus in Iran is extremely worrisome. The fungus is spreading rapidly and could seriously lower wheat production in countries at direct risk. Affected countries and the international community have to ensure that the spread of the disease is checked in order to reduce the risk to countries that are already hit by high food prices, the UN agency announced in Rome on Wednesday.

The fungus, previously found in East Africa and Yemen, is capable of wreaking havoc to wheat production by destroying entire fields, FAO says.

According to FAO, countries in the predicted, immediate pathway grow more than 65 million hectares of wheat, accounting for 25 per cent of the global wheat harvest.

Quoting M. E. Tasneem, Chairman of the Pakistan Agriculture Research Council, the FAO said: “If we don’t control this stem rust threat, it will have a major impact on food security, especially since global wheat stocks are at a historic low”.

“If we fail to contain Ug99 it could bring calamity to tens of millions of farmers and hundreds of millions of consumers,” says Nobel Laureate Borlaug. “We know what to do and how to do it. All we need are the financial resources, scientific cooperation and political will to contain this threat to world food security.”

The FAO estimated that as much as 80 per cent of all wheat varieties planted in Asia and Africa were susceptible to the wheat stem rust, Puccinia graminis. The spores of wheat rust are mostly carried by wind over long distances and across continents.

The Iranian government has informed the FAO that the fungus has been detected in some localities in Broujerd and Hamedan in western Iran. Laboratory tests have confirmed the presence of the fungus. Iran said it would enhance its research capacity to face the new infection and develop new wheat varieties resistant to the disease.

The wheat fungus first emerged in Uganda in 1999 and is, therefore, called Ug99. The wind-borne trans-boundary pest subsequently spread to Kenya and Ethiopia. In 2007, an FAO mission confirmed for the first time that Ug99 had affected wheat fields in Yemen. The Ug99 strain found in Yemen was already more virulent than the one found in East Africa. Ethiopia and Kenya had serious wheat rust epidemics in 2007 with considerable yield losses.

The Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI), established to combat wheat rusts around the world, will support countries in developing resistant varieties, producing clean quality seeds, upgrading national plant protection and plant breeding services, and developing contingency plans. The BGRI was founded by Norman Borlaug (known as “the father of the Green Revolution”), Cornell University; the International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre and the FAO.

Disease surveillance and wheat breeding is already underway to monitor the fungus and to develop Ug99 resistant varieties.