WSU scientists first to characterize barley plant-stem rust spore communication
Washington Ag Today October 19, 2011 Two Washington State University scientists have established that a barley plant recognizes an invader and begins to marshal its defenses within five minutes of an attack. Traditionally it was thought that a disease-causing organism had to penetrate a plant to initiate resistance. WSU says the discovery, along with the scientist’s successful cloning of barley’s disease fighting gene and the pathogen’s signaling gene, could help revolutionize the battle against cereal crop enemies such as stem rust. It was while monitoring the activity of a combination of genes that WSU’s Andy Kleinhofs and Jay Nirmala identified proteins recognized by the genes and saw the series of signals that tell the plant to protect itself. Camille Steber, a research geneticist for the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service at WSU, says the discovery is a game-changer for plant scientists. USDA recently extended the comment period on its proposed rule on animal disease traceability. Interested parties now have until December 9th to comment on the proposed rule. USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service administrator Gregory Perham says it’s easy to make a comment. Perham: “They can read the rule by visiting regulations-dot-gov to read the rule and to let us know what they think. All they need to do is enter traceability into the keyword search, select the proposed rule and click on “submit a comment.” 12 That deadline again is December 9th. I’m Bob Hoff and that’s Washington Ag Today on Northwest Aginfo Net. ?
