proposed global surveillance system would act as a bulwark against diseases that threaten food crops. UF plant pathologist Karen Garrett, who is affiliated with both IFAS and the EPI, coauthored a policy paper in Science outlining a visionary system that would link existing local and national programs to identify, predict, monitor and mitigate outbreaks of emerging crop diseases.
Plant pathology researchers with UF’s Emerging Pathogens Institute and IFAS seek to uncover what drives the spread of laurel wilt disease, an emerging forest pathogen responsible for killing more than 300 million redbays. A new study led by IFAS-EPI postdoctoral researcher Robin Choudhury found that the biggest indicator of a Laurel family trees’ susceptibility was having a large diameter trunk and dense clustering.
The banana crop is an important commodity in Tanzania and much of East Africa, with many in the region eating up to 400 kilograms of bananas per person per year. Plant diseases are a major threat to the sustainability of the crop, and over the past decade, a bacterial infection once found only in Ethiopia has risen in prominence in all countries around Lake Victoria, including Tanzania.
“Life would not long remain possible in the absence of microbes.”—Louis Pasteur (Father of Microbiology)
Public health records may significantly underestimate the number of people in Florida who are sickened by a rare dangerous food-borne toxin carried by popular sport fish, including barracuda, grouper and amberjack, according to a new study published online today in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.
