Resistance (to UG99) is futile

The Pakistan Biotechnology Information Centre has good news to share:

LAHORE: The scientists of Ayub Agricultural Research Institute, Faisalabad has successfully developed a new variety of wheat ‘UG99’ which is resistant to stem rust disease of wheat. The disease poses world-wide threat to wheat productivity and productive approach of AARI scientists to solve this problem would prove highly beneficial for the country.

Unfortunately, no more details are forthcoming. Where did they find the resistance? How did they get it into a productive variety? The world needs to know.

One Reply to “Resistance (to UG99) is futile”

  1. I can’t tell you that, but what hear from colleagues at CIMMYT is that UG99 resistant is readily available — thanks to having a genebank. See this article. Apparently is easy enough to breed resistant varieties. Getting them adopted is another matter. Disaster may need to strike first.

    Nice UG99 static and dynamic mapping (of the geographic kind) going at CIMMYT too.

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