The scientists who recently identified dramatic changes in yellow rust populations affecting wheat in the United Kingdom have just been awarded £1.2 million to develop a new, quicker, cheaper version of their field-based diagnostic tool.
Yellow rust is a fungal disease with the potential to destroy entire wheat crops; those plants which do survive often have lower quality grain.
The team of five scientists from the John Innes Centre (JIC), the Genome Analysis Centre (TGAC) and the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB) believe the larger data sample resulting from this exponential increase in the accuracy and frequency of tests will mean they get a much clearer, more detailed picture of the different strains of yellow rust in the U.K., and eventually, across the world.
More information is available here: https://www.jic.ac.uk/news/2015/06/scientists-close-gap-devastating-cereal-killer/
