Devastating soyabean disease found in US
By FT.COM
Published: March 1, 2005
Asian soyabean rust, a wind-borne disease that can devastate soyabean crops if left untreated, has been discovered for the first time in the US this year in the southern state of Florida.
The survival of the disease over the winter will jolt soyabean futures markets and re-ignite concern among US soyabean farmers. They had hoped that winter conditions would be severe enough to kill off any plants hosting the fungus.
The finding came only days after the US Department of Agriculture gave the US a clean bill of health on the disease so far this winter. The rust sparked alarm in November when it was discovered to have landed in the US for the first time since it was first detected in Japan in 1902.
The fear is that the spores carrying the disease could now be blown north to the Midwest, which accounts for the bulk of US soyabean production. The USDA estimated last year that if Asian soyabean rust took hold in the US, it could cost farmers losses of up to $2bn.
The disease infects soyabean leaves and reduces them to dessicated brown tissue in a month, if left untreated. In Australia and Brazil, it has been known to destroy 70-80 per cent of a crop, and up to 100 per cent in Vietnam.
Economists say that, even with treatment, the rust it is likely to have a significant economic impact if it takes hold. The development will be watched closely by buyers in China, which is the largest customer for US and Brazilian soyabeans.
Soyabeans account for 16 per cent of US crop production – second after maize – and 12 per cent of all US agricultural exports, which amounted to $62bn last year.
The Florida department of agriculture's plant industry division posted a report on the state's Asian soyabean rust website late on Monday reporting the existence of the fungus on kudzu plants in Dade City, Pasco County, Florida.
Kudzu is a creeper that acts as a host for the disease. Experts have been dreading the re-emergence of the rust on kudzu, a plant hard to treat with retardant sprays because it grows wild.
Monte Miles, plant pathologist in the department of crop sciences at the University of Illinois, told the FT in December: "There are enough acres of kudzu in the south that once rust becomes established, we have an incredible production of spores that can be blown north."
The disease has spread steadily west from Asia since its initial detection in Japan, afflicting soyabean crops across Asia, Africa and, in the 1990s, South America.
Experts were surprised in November to discover that the spores had leapfrogged Mexico and the Caribbean after being carried north by Hurricane Ivan to Louisiana, where the disease was first found in the US.
The detection of the disease in November was restricted to nine southern states that account for a fraction of US production.
Since then, the US government has established pilot plots of soyabeans in those states as an early warning system for the coming planting season, which starts in April.
US farmers in the Midwest have also made efforts to spread awareness about the disease and methods of treatment. |
