No rust, just smut

An article in Arabic in Al-Akhbar about a fungal disease decimating this year's wheat harvest in the West Bekaa. Apparently, it has affected 7,500 ha out of a total planted area of 12,000 ha and caused up to $10 millions in losses. The farmers believe this was caused by unstable weather this year and late rainfall followed by unseasonal frost. I got worried that this may be the devastating black stem rust we have been expecting and wrote to my friend Wafa Khoury in the FAO. This is what she answered:

"In fact this is one of the wheat smuts not stem rust. Smut is controlled by treating the seeds before planting since it is a systemic fungus that grows either from the embryo or infects the seedlings an moves systemically. The emerging seeds will be infected and will be filled with smut spores rather than wheat, and with the harvest they will spread and infect the other seeds to be used for planting. If there has been an epidemic this year, it must have been the accumulation of lack of seed treatment for the past several years (at least 2-3 years). If you are thinking of the new virulent stem rust strain that is now becoming very serious in the region, it might reach Lebanon next year and affect most of the varieties planted, but we believe it will take at least another year before reaching Lebanon and Syria."

So what I read in her message is that the farmers got it wrong, and it is not this year's weather, but a lack of seed treatment over the past years that is the cause of the losses. This is the simplest things, and the Ministry of Agriculture and its various branches should really get their act together and improve their extension. And the mega million development projects funded through bilateral aid (USAID, EU, who do not create $10 million in revenue trust me), could have invested a couple of millions in mobile extension programs, which would have saved wheat farmers $10 millions.