Wheat Devastating Disease

[RiceGuy]

It seems there's a disease strain which is devastating wheat crops, and is now spreading through Africa. I'm not sure whether it's a good thing or a bad thing. After all, wouldn't it be interesting if the original varieties of wheat, before all the hybridization efforts of man, turn out to be the only ones able to survive?

Here are some articles on it:

Open Original Shared Link

Open Original Shared Link

[gfp]

A Global Rust Initiative has begun but progress is slow according to its head, Rick Ward. After a 1954 wheat rust epidemic the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, known as CIMMY, that introduced rust-resistant high-yielding wheat which has ended hunger in much of the world. Researcher Norman Borlaug won the Nobel Prize for his work developing the wheat.

Forgetting we have a special dislike for wheat....

Erm, Jurassic Park.....anyone.

It doesn't take a Nobel Prize winner to realise that this devastating "natural phenomena" isn't natural...

If wheat (or its forrunners) were meant to be gorwing in that area they would have done so naturally and without having to modify it... and a million years of natural selection would have equiped it...

So altering and realtering wheat to make it grow where it shouldn't be growing just pushes the problem to the next big time... when more people die ...

[RiceGuy]

So altering and realtering wheat to make it grow where it shouldn't be growing just pushes the problem to the next big time... when more people die ...

Yeah, I believe that's correct. I've read that wheat originally didn't grow in many areas where it does now, and that it is the hybrids which made it possible.

[ravenwoodglass]

Yep and I bet if you look at people the ones whose ancesters hailed from those areas where wheat did not naturally grow may be the most likely to get celiac when they eat gluten.

I feel so sorry for countries where there are natural or manmade disasters and no matter what their native diet we send them wheat or high gluten fortification for their food. I wonder how many cases dysentary are caused by this practice.