Spanning the Globe
Soybean Rust Sighting
After visiting the Small Grains Institute at Bethlehem on Tuesday, we drove through the beautiful Golden Gate Highlands Park to Harrismith to spend the night. On the drive we saw black wildebeest, blesbok, and the rare gray crowned cranes. Today we drove from our "luxury hotel" in Harrismith to the ARC’s Cedara Research Center in Hilton, South Africa, and achieved one of the main goals of our trip: to see Asian soybean rust. On the way to Cedara we enjoyed the spectacular scenery of the Drakensberg Escarpment.
Neal McLaren, a UFS plant pathologist, accompanied us and was nice enough to stop at several scenic spots along the way. David’s wife had sent along a VT hat to give to a South African child and we found the perfect little recipient at one of the stops. At Cedara, pathologist Neil van Riij took us out to the field plots and showed us diseases of soybeans, maize, and sorghum. In spite of the prolonged drought in this area (17 mm of rain in a month that normally has a rainfall of 120 mm), we did see Asian soybean rust, caused by the fungus Phakopsora pachyrhizi, on some of the soybeans and we all learned to recognize the disease.
In maize we saw gray leaf spot, northern leaf blight, common rust, and Phaeosphaeria leaf spot (a disease for which the causal agent has not yet been conclusively determined). We also saw northern leaf blight in sorghum. In general, disease pressure was low due to the drought, but we were able to bring samples back to the lab to view symptoms and causal fungi with the microscope.
We managed to upload our blog posting at Cedara, albeit with a rather slow connection, which prevented us from uploading some of our photos. (This blog alone has taken over two hours to post!) We ended the day dusty and tired but in good spirits at the "Mist and Drizzle" restaurant (weather for which this area is noted) where we dined with pathologists, Neal McLaren, Neil van Riij, and Pat Caldwell, along with two of Neal’s graduate students.
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Mary Ann -
I'm glad to see that you are able to make some entries! Your pictures are wonderful.
Lori
Posted by on 03/08 at 10:23 AM