rust

Wheat stripe rust, a fungal disease that can reduce yields by 40 percent, has "swept through fields from Oklahoma to Kansas up into the Dakotas and east into the Great Lakes states," says DTN. The disease arrived as the winter wheat crop nears harvest; USDA will update its estimate of the crop on Friday.

Only a few wheat scientists around the world are focused on developing wheat strains that can resist three fungal diseases - known as stem, leaf and stripe rust - that are capable of causing huge crop losses, says a University of Minnesota professor.

Sanjaya Rajaram, who worked with Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug and developed 480 wheat varieties, is the winner of the $250,000 World Food Prize for 2014.