Indian farm scientists have been put on high alert over the danger posed by a Ugandan rust to wheat grown in India and research bodies have been asked to evolve substitutes to susceptible varieties at the earliest.
"India's PBW-343 and Pakistan's Inquilab varieties have been found to be 60-70 per cent susceptible to Ugandan Isolate 92UG99, a rust evolved in east Africa. I have written to scientists to prepare substitutes which are resistant to such diseases," Director General Indian Council of Agricultural Research, Mangala Rai, said in New Delhi.
He said PBW-343 was cultivated in around six million hectares or nearly one-fourths of the total wheat cultivated in the country and mostly grown in India's grain bowl of Punjab, Haryana and west Uttar Pradesh.
The Ugandan Isolate rust knocks out the SR-31 gene which imparts resistance from diseases to the wheat crop, he said.
The director general said in the normal course as the rust spores travel from Africa through Nile Valley, it will take 7-8 years for it to reach India but any change in route or human error can bring the danger 'to our doorstep right away.'
For the last two years, PBW-343 and Inquilab varieties have been monitored in the Kenyan Agricultural University, Nigoro and found to be up to 70 per cent susceptible, he added.
Rai said there are pests and pathogens which are known to travel up to 2000 km and there is no room for complacency.
Crops are also increasingly facing the danger of termites whose numbers are rising due to large incidence of drought, absence of summer ploughing and changed farming cultural practices, he pointed out.
