Rapid diagnostics tool deployed to monitor wheat rust in Nepal

Published 2024년 9월 13일

Tridge summary

A recent study published in the Plant Disease journal reveals the discovery of the Ug99 wheat stem rust strain in Nepal, highlighting the critical need to safeguard the country's wheat, which is its third most important food crop, from such pathogens. Nepal already struggles with significant outbreaks of the yellow rust pathogen, leading to grain yield losses of up to 80%. To effectively combat these diseases, it is essential to identify the specific strains of the pathogen. In this regard, Nepal has implemented the MARPLE diagnostics, a method developed by the John Innes Center and CIMMYT, which uses a handheld nanopore sequencer to analyze wheat samples and identify the strains of the wheat rust pathogen in near real-time. This innovation, now adapted to identify stem rust strains like Ug99, enables rapid strain identification and monitoring, supporting decision-making for effective disease management in the country.

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Original content

The recent discovery of the Ug99 wheat stem rust strain in Nepal, published in the Plant Disease journal, has once again emphasized the need for vigilance to protect Nepal's third most important food crop from any large-scale outbreaks of this devastating wheat disease.Nepal already contends with frequent large-scale outbreaks caused by the related yellow rust pathogen, that can cause severe grain yield losses of 30–80% if not effectively controlled. A key component in guiding the correct control measures is to understand the precise strain of the pathogen present in a farmer's field.For yellow rust, the deployment of MARPLE diagnostics in Nepal since 2022 has helped provide this capacity. The MARPLE diagnostics methodology developed at the John Innes Center in collaboration with CIMMYT, uses a handheld MinION nanopore sequencer, built by Oxford Nanopore, to analyze samples of wheat infected with yellow rust.Reading the pieces of the pathogen's genome which define the different ...

Source: Phys