The lab will be equipped to analyse pathogens sent in from any suspicious outbreak. Assuming, of course, that someone notices such an outbreak in the first place. Farmers are not obliged to notify the authorities when an outbreak occurs. No amount of technology will help, of course, if there are not enough plant pathologists to police the crops. Even as the threat of natural and unnatural disease outbreaks increases, says Bob Forster of the University of Idaho in Kimberley, there is a declining number of people who can identify diseases in the field.
Fungicides can stop or slow the spread of a fungal disease.
But for crops infected with bacteria or viruses, usually the only option is to burn them, and eradicate any insect vectors, which can be extremely difficult and costly. An alternative approach would be to rapidly replace contaminated crops with those that are resistant to the pathogen. Plant breeding companies are investing millions characterising plant genes. In a few years, when a new disease strikes, it may well be possible to pull out the right resistance gene and breed it into the crop that is under attack. The USDA has already identified 26 genes that protect against the barley stripe rust that was wiping out the crop in the northwest of the US in 1995.