GE Varieties Needed for Disease Control

LORNE - Mar 14/01 - STAT -- Genetic engineering is the next logical step in trying to combat a large number of plant diseases which afflict wheat and barley crops around the world, argues Dr James Cook, from the U.S. based Washington State University.

Speaking at this year's Australasian Soil-borne Diseases Symposium here in the state of Victoria, he said host plants need to be bred which can resist a wider range of diseases before the full yield potential of wheat and barley crops can be realized under traditional or organic production schemes.

Dr Cook said all efforts to control diseases such as take-all, rhizoctonia and pythium reply on producers managing the way they grow their crops.

"However, it is no longer good enough to limit our work on root disease management entirely to management by cultural practices," Dr Cook said. "While the list of cultural disease control methods is impressive it is not enough to manage these diseases as indicated by 25% to 30% yield increases in response to soil fumigation.

"We are at the limits of what can be accomplished with cultural practices and must seriously turn to host plant resistance for our next breakthrough."

Dr Cook said making wheat and barley plants resistant to take-all and other diseases using conventional processes had not yet been achieved. However, the use of transgenic technology should be explored given that it had been used with success, for example, to confer insect resistance in cotton.

In the case of the better control of root diseases it could also be thoroughly justified, Dr Cook said.

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