Another installment of Lessons from Plant Pandemics 🦠//thread
The first ingredient in any epidemic? The pathogen. Coffee leaf rust is a dastardly disease of coffee caused by a fungus. Read more about it over at @aps apsnet.org/edcenter/disan…
Just like Covid19 is a disease caused by a viral pathogen called SARS-CoV-2, coffee leaf rust is a disease caused by the fungal pathogen H. vastatrix, just one in a massive family of crop-affecting rusts (like SARS-CoV-2 is one of a large family of coronaviruses)
Taken together, rusts are considered the most persistent, prevalent, and damaging pathogens in all of agriculture. Coffee is no exception -- leaf rust is one of the most significant challenges facing coffee farmers.
It can be managed, but given the "right" conditions, it can wreaks havoc on coffee production, as it has done in a series of epidemics stretching back 200 years. 
The last major outbreak, in 2012-2014, decimated coffee farms across Central America. By some estimates it put 1.7 million people out of work and drove waves of migration to the US. #wcrreads apsjournals.apsnet.org/doi/10.1094/PH…
Two critical control measures to manage coffee leaf rust are quarantine and cultural management. Sound familiar? @APS apsnet.org/edcenter/disan…
Recent research from @CATIE has shown that
a major driver of the epidemic was poverty. #wcrreads Early indications suggest a similar dynamic may be at work in the spread of coronavirus—those without resources less ill-equipped to prepare or cope. research.wur.nl/en/publication…
a major driver of the epidemic was poverty. #wcrreads Early indications suggest a similar dynamic may be at work in the spread of coronavirus—those without resources less ill-equipped to prepare or cope. research.wur.nl/en/publication…
For any disease, it is difficult to fight an enemy you know little about. The speed with which the global scientific community has come together to learn about SARS-CoV-2 is astonishing -- a genome sequence was assembled in mere months from its emergence.
Despite its global economic devastation, the genome of H. vastatrix was only sequenced in 2019 - one of many examples of how coffee research has lagged behind that for other crops. journals.plos.org/plosone/articl… #wcrreads
Despite the fact that coffee producers have been living with rust for more than 200 years, serious questions remain unanswered regarding the biology of coffee leaf rust, the answers to which could significantly influence approaches to fighting the disease.
Join us on Friday for a chat with plant historian and rust expert @stuartmccook as we discuss his book “Coffee is Not Forever” #WCRReads. Meanwhile, send us your rust questions!
