Ug99

Ug99 is a strain of wheat stem rust that was first identified in Uganda in 1998 (and named in 1999). By 2001, Ug99 began appearing in fields in Kenya; in Ethiopia by 2003; Sudan and Yemen by 2006; and Iran a year later. It now plagues wheat plants in nine African and Middle Eastern countries. Should the pathogen establish a global presence, 90 percent of wheat varieties could succumb, with whole crops flopping over and rotting within weeks or months of infection. The annual global harvest of some 700 million tons of wheat would be decimated...

University of Minnesota’s Anderson says GM corn and soybeans may have received more acceptance because they’re often processed or fed to animals, whereas most wheat enters the human food stream. Some consumers fear that tinkering with crop genomes could reduce the nutritive value of food, introduce toxins, increase the use of pesticides, or propel our already heavily-processed diets further away from what nature provided...

Nevertheless, GM wheat may still make its debut. In 2010, Monsanto announced that it was re-entering the field of biotech wheat and would work to genetically engineer crops that are higher yielding, stress tolerant, or herbicide resistant... Wheat growers are also starting to come around to the idea of cultivating GM plants. Several years ago, the National Association of Wheat Growers and US Wheat Associates expressed their support of biotech wheat. “We just have to prepare ourselves for a future where GM crops are more accepted,” Wulff says.

Much more info at the link.