Writer: Steve Hill, (979) 845-2895
Contact: Dr. Gary Odvody, (512) 265-9201, g-odvody@tamu.edu
COLLEGE STATION — A year after a potentially devastating sorghum disease entered the United States, Texas has become a center for the fight against the disease.
New projects at the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station in Corpus Christi, the arrival of internationally renowned researchers on sorghum ergot at the station and at College Station, and an international conference in June are among the efforts to battle ergot.
“This disease became a global phenomenon in the space of about three years,” said Dr. Gary Odvody, an associate professor of plant pathology at the station. “Most of the grain sorghum in Texas is not susceptible because it’s self-fertile, and it’s sterility that makes sorghum susceptible. But sterility is important for hybrid seed production, so concern about ergot is not undue.”
The sterility issue makes ergot potentially devastating to the seed sorghum industry in the Texas Panhandle, which produces some 90 percent of the U.S. hybrid sorghum seed supply and 35 percent of the world supply. But some conditions can also allow ergot to cause serious losses in fertile sorghum, as it already has in various countries around the world.
Minimizing those losses is one of the focuses of the Conference on the Status of Sorghum Ergot in North America, to be held June 24-26 in Corpus Christi. It will bring together experts from all over the United States, as well as other countries, to discuss ways of battling the disease.
A team of international and Texas A&M University researchers is approaching ergot from two different directions: finding potential ways to control the disease through use of chemicals or other agronomic means and finding ways to build ergot resistance into sorghum.
“We may have to utilize biotechnology and other methods to increase resistance,” he said.
Chemical-control research will focus on developing the most effective and efficient control — the best application method with the best fungicide — but also on searching for alternate chemical control methods and materials, Odvody said.
“Alternate chemicals are important so we don’t end up selecting for fungicide-tolerant strains of ergot,” he said.
But there is also more basic knowledge needed, he said.
“A big question is how ergot spreads. Is it primarily through seed? By wind?” he noted.
Whatever answers there are will probably come from the combined efforts of many researchers, including several on loan from their current employers.
Dr. Ranajit Bandyopadhyay of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, which is in India, arrived at in College Station for a 10-month assignment in January. He is sponsored by funds from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service and will work with Texas A&M researchers and Dr. Jeff Dahlberg, USDA-ARS sorghum curator in Puerto Rico.
Dr. Debra Frederickson of the University of Zimbabwe arrived College Station in May for a six-month research program. She is supported by funds from INTSORMIL, the International Sorghum and Millet Collaborative Research Support Program sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development.
“They have vast experience with ergot and we’re just beginning to work with it. Their presence will give us more rapid insights into the disease,” Odvody said. “They are, in addition to training us, adding our data to theirs as they continue their own research.”
Rapid action is needed because the disease moves so quickly, he said. Ergot existed primarily in Asia and Africa before 1995, but that year it caused severe losses in Brazil and quickly spread north to Central America before being found in South Texas in March 1997.
More information on the sorghum ergot conference, which will be held at the Omni Bayfront Hotel in Corpus Christi, is available from Odvody at (512) 265-9201. His e-mail address is g-odvody@tamu.edu, and a conference website may be accessed at http://www.ars-grin.gov/ars/SoAtlantic/Mayaguez/program.html.
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