Scientists and farmers team-up to seek diversity in Morocco’s fields

Scientists and farmers team-up to seek diversity in Morocco’s fields

Editor

FAO ;

Descripción

Visit<a href=http://www.planttreaty.org/"> <i>ITPGRFA site internet</i>.</a> The farmers and scientists who scour the fields of Morocco collecting local varieties of durum and bread wheat as part of the Treaty Benefit-sharing Project are doing more than conserving their genetic diversity. They are contributing to the global effort against one of the most dangerous plant pests to emerge in the last century – a fungus that attacks wheat. Known as UG99 because it was first detected in Uganda in 1999, its spores have spread through Africa and the Middle East and continue their move east toward Asia. Ninety percent of the world’s wheat has no resistance to UG99 which means plant en in the spores’ paths.