by Nathan Detwiler, Sustainable Plant Systems major

Early morning sunlight filters through the clouds and through the glass garage door window. You fire up your laptop and reply to that email from your coworker who you still catch up with even though they are three states away. Bessie Smith is singing in the background connecting your mind with the reality that life isn’t always happy though it might still be beautiful. Reaching out your hand you take up the still hot mug of coffee you had just set down. You sip the coffee recognizing the distinct flavor Ethiopian Yirgacheffe and smile.

Coffee is a very important aspect of modern culture, and has an important economic and social role in our economy. Like every other agronomic crop, coffee faces many disease challenges. One of these disease challenges that has recently affected coffee production is Coffee Rust. Coffee Rust (Hemileia vastatrix) is a fungal pathogen and currently causes severe economic losses in coffee production. In the 1860’s Coffee Rust decimated coffee production on the island of Ceylon and that’s why tea is grown there now.

Coffee plays a unique role as the most important agricultural product in international trade. In 2012, Coffee Rust showed up again to cause another disease epidemic, this time in Latin America and the Caribbeans. Coffee prices skyrocketed as the disease slashed production. Coffee producers were unable to effectively control the disease due to lack of training and poor resource availability. Fortunately this catastrophe has sparked renewed research and development for the coffee industry.

Sources:
APSnet > Coffee rust
www.plantvillage.org > Coffee
www.coffeebeandirect.co > Ethiopian yirgacheffe

Nate Detwiler is an student at The Ohio State University where he studies  Horticulture. A coffee enthusiast and former barista, Nate daily enjoys making and discovering new coffees. He also works at a local organic vegetable farm and is fascinated with the importance of food as an economic commodity and social connector.
View > Nate’s photo journal

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This blog post was an assignment for Societal Issues: Pesticides, Alternatives and the Environment (PLNTPTH 4597). The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the class, Department of Plant Pathology or the instructor.

by Di Wang, Pharmaceutical Science and Economics double major

The banana.  The yellow, curved, oblong fruit we prefer over the round ones. We all recognize the most common banana, the Cavendish. However many of us don’t know that the Cavendish banana is fighting a deadly fungus.

The fungus, the cause of Panama disease, is devastating banana plantations around the world. Scientists are frantically trying to come up with a modified banana before the fungus invades Latin America.

But why is the Cavendish so susceptible to the Panama disease? Unlike the multiple varieties of apples, the banana is only mass-produced in one variety. Since all Cavendish bananas are genetically similar, one devastating disease can wipe out an entire region of the Cavendish if not managed correctly.

The Cavendish became the mainstream banana after an earlier variation of the Panama disease wiped out the previous dominant banana, the Gros Michel, in the 1950s. The Cavendish banana was selected because it is seedless, easy to grow, and has good flavor.

Now, scientists are frantically crossbreeding the Cavendish with Panama disease resistant plants.  Scientists, such as John Aguilar¹, are creating prototypes of bananas similar to the Cavendish, however none of the current prototypes are market ready.

Even though the costs to grow bananas are constantly going up, people are still willing to buy the Cavendish. Banana exports from Honduras in 2015 have risen about 11.5% since 2014², which doesn’t fit the basic concept of supply and demand of economics.

Bananas are such staples in our diets that even when the price goes up, people will still buy more of them! Although the Panama disease won’t wipe out the Cavendish anytime soon, we will one day have to discover or create a new strain of banana and explain to our future generations what the Cavendish tasted like.

About the Author

Di Wang is a senior at The Ohio State University. He is currently a double major: BS in Pharmaceutical Science and BA in Economics.

Sources:

1. PBS > Inside the fight to save the bananas we know (and love)

2.  Freshmark.com > Honduras: The value of banana exports up 11.5%

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This blog post was an assignment for Societal Issues: Pesticides, Alternatives and the Environment (PLNTPTH 4597). The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the class, Department of Plant Pathology or the instructor.

by Austin Wippel, Sustainable Plant Systems major

About
Soybean cyst nematode (SCN) was first confirmed in Ohio in 1987. This parasitic nematode can now be found in 68 counties in Ohio.

Annual losses from SCN exceed 1 billion annually in the U.S.  Susceptible varieties can have a yield loss of 40 bushels per acre when compared to a tolerant variety.

SCN’s Impact
SCN damages plants by feeding directly on the roots of the soybean plant. This reduces the plants ability to take in nutrients and provides sites of entry for root rotting fungi.

There are many factors that will affect how susceptible a soybean crop is to infection by SCN. These factors include existing SCN populations, tillage practices, soil fertility, and environmental conditions.

Symptoms
The most common symptoms to soybeans in fields with high populations of SCN include stunted plants and chlorosis on the leaves. With  lower populations of SCN, the only real symptom will be a yield reduction. Other symptoms mirror signs of nutrient deficiencies, compaction, and injury from herbicides.

Control
SCN populations are rarely eradicated from a field once they have been introduced. SCN populations grow rapidly if soybeans are grown for consecutive years in the same field. However, they also reduced drastically when a field is rotated to a non-host crop. Crop rotation is the best strategy towards combating this problem.

In review, SCN has taken root in the soils of North America. We need to collectively implement good crop rotation and the use of tolerant varieties on our farms to get this problem under control.

For more information, visit Spectrum Analytic

About the Author
I am a junior at The Ohio State University majoring in Agronomy. I live and work on a family farm located in south central Ohio.

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This blog post was an assignment for Societal Issues: Pesticides, Alternatives and the Environment (PLNTPTH 4597). The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the class, Department of Plant Pathology or the instructor.

by Myer Runyon, Sustainable Plant Systems

Kudzu bug on soybean, Photo: Russ Ottens, University of Georgia, Bugwood.org

The Kudzu bug (Megacopta cribraria) is a pest that has not been known to most of the United States for quite some time, up until the past few years. Just recently, though, kudzu bugs have been popping up mostly around the southern part of the United States and they are starting to migrate north, leaving some wondering what impact they will have on the environment and crops.

The kudzu bug mainly feeds on the kudzu plant, which would be a good thing, however as more migrate here, we are starting to notice that they also like to feed on crops such as soybeans and other legumes. Also, according to an article in timesfreepress.com, they are gregarious, which means they travel in large groups of hundreds of kudzu bugs. This adds more concern because that means when they invade a soybean field, there could potentially be thousands of kudzu bugs attacking the crops.

It also is not as obvious to tell if a field has been invaded just from looking at the crops. In the same article it stated that the bugs do not eat the plant itself, but it has a “piercing, sucking mouth” that sucks the nutrients from the crop, leaving it malnourished, and eventually dead. They have not became a major problem just yet, but scientists are trying to study the insects now so that when they become a problem, they can be dealt with quickly and efficiently.

About the author
My name is Myer Runyan, I am a fifth year senior at Ohio State studying Sustainable Plant Systems with a specialization in Agronomy. I live on a hog farm back at home, which I hope to go back to and eventually take over after I graduate, and I plan to take what I learn from this class and apply it to my work back home.

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This blog post was an assignment for Societal Issues: Pesticides, Alternatives and the Environment (PLNTPTH 4597). The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the class, Department of Plant Pathology or the instructor.

by John Grusenmeyer, Sustainable Plant Systems-Agronomy major

It provides 70% of the dietary energy in Bangladesh and 20% of the world’s dietary energy needs (FAO). A crop that provides humanity so much of the world’s dietary energy and is absolutely crucial in some Asian countries needs to be protected and cannot be allowed to fail.

This crop is rice.

Rice (Oryza sativa) is attacked by many different diseases but one of the most important is Rice Blast caused by the fungus, Magnaporthe oryzae. Rice blast occurs in every corner of the world that rice is grown and has never been eradicated from any region.

A small infection with the right conditions can quickly turn into and epidemic that can greatly reduce yields or even destroy a field. In Japan between 1953 and 1960 annual losses ranged from 1.4% to 7.3% with hundreds of thousands of tons of rice lost. Even spraying didn’t help. In 1962, 721,000 of the 909,000 hectares sprayed were infected.

In West Africa, losses in rice paddies have reached up to 50% and even 70%.

So what should rice farmers do?

The best control for rice blast is crop rotation. By excluding the rice seedlings from areas where there is high inoculum from previous years keeps the disease pressure lower and can keep epidemics to a minimum. Another cultural control is precise fertilization as over fertilizing rice with nitrogen can increase disease pressure.

There are also cultivars of rice that have genetic resistance to rice blast. Unfortunately, it is only partially effective because of the many different races of rice blast.

Rice blast will continue to plague farmers but research continues to try to find more solutions in an ever changing battle for a crop that is crucial to humanity.

For more info
American Phytopathological Society, TeBeest D., Guerber C., Ditmore M. Rice Blast
Plantwise Knowledge Bank. Rice blast disease (Magnaporthe grisea)
Food and Agriculture Organization. International Year of Rice 2004 Rice is Life

John Grusenmeyer is a junior at The Ohio State University studying agronomy. Growing up on a farm in Miami County, Ohio, sparked his interest in agriculture. After graduation, he hopes to use his education to volunteer with an organization where he can help reduce poverty and hunger through agricultural improvements.
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This blog post was an assignment for Societal Issues: Pesticides, Alternatives and the Environment (PLNTPTH 4597). The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the class, Department of Plant Pathology or the instructor.

by Elizabeth Kifer – Professional Golf Management Major

Rice is one of Asia’s main food staples and in 1942 it had almost disappeared. The area of Bengal in West India had experienced a disease that reduced rice yield to 40-90% and an estimated 3 million people died from starvation. According to the Crop Life Foundation, “nothing as devastating as the Bengal rice brown spot epidemic of 1942 has been recorded in plant pathology literature.”

This widely underrated disease is Cochliobolus miyabeanus (croplife.org) or simply known as brown spot. It is a fungal disease that attacks the plant’s coleoptile, leaves, leaf sheath, panicle branches, glumes and spikelets. It looks like brown spots on the leaves and can kill the whole leaf. The disease develops in hot temperatures and in un-flooded and nutrient-deficient soil, or in soils that accumulate toxic substances. The leaves must be wet for 8-24 hours in order for infection to occur. Most shockingly, the disease can survive in the seed for more than four years! It spreads through air and be in weeds, infected rice debris, and infected seed. According to Rice Knowledge Bank, “Brown spot can occur at all crop stages, but infection is most critical during maximum tillering up to the ripening stages of the crop.”

Luckily, we can prevent the spread of brown spot by regularly checking for lesions, planting resistant varieties, and monitoring soil nutrients regularly.

Sources:

Repeat of Great Bengal Famine Unlikely Thanks to Fungicides – Croplife.org (pdf)
Brown spot, fact sheet – Rice Knowledge Bank, International Rice Research Institute

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This blog post was an assignment for Societal Issues: Pesticides, Alternatives and the Environment (PLNTPTH 4597). The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the class, Department of Plant Pathology or the instructor.