In Queensland, Sugar Cane Smut Appearing In "Resistant" Cane Varieties - The Australian

[hatrack]

QUEENSLAND canegrowers are being urged not to panic after a debilitating crop disease was discovered in supposedly resistant cane varieties. Sugar cane smut, a fine black powder of fungal spores, kills cane plants and can wipe out entire plantations.

It caused havoc in Western Australia's sugar industry in 1998, and was detected for the first time in Queensland at Childers last year. Since then, smut has spread to other areas of the state, notably in central Queensland and in the Herbert region between Cairns and Townsville.

Sugarcane research company BSES has been behind a drive to replace cane varieties susceptible to smut with resistant varieties in an effort to overcome the disease. BSES moved yesterday to downplay fears the disease could affect the new varieties after it was detected in three fields of resistant crops. Two affected fields were in the Herbert region, and the other was at Bundaberg in the state's southeast.

Biosecurity expert Barry Croft said it was not unusual for the airborne spores to infect resistant crops in those regions heavily affected by the disease. "These (susceptible) varieties are producing vast amounts of smut spores that are putting pressure on resistant and intermediate varieties," Mr Croft said. "The lower levels of disease in resistant varieties should have minimal effect on yield."

EDIT

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23353527-30417,00.html

[phantom power]

1. I might panic a little bit.

Barry the "biosecurity expert" doesn't seem to appreciate how fast a fungus can evolve, producing a trillion or so spores at a time.

[acmavm]

2. I'm sure EVERYTHING mutates in order to find a

way to survice. Sort of like the superbugs we have now that are infecting people with diseases that we thought we had gotten rid of. (Excuse the preposition at the end of that sentence please.)

[Warpy]

3. Let's hope they research the cure a little better than they did

when they imported the wrong species of cane toad to control pests.

[catnhatnh]

4. Smut, Smut, Smut.....

it's all that's posted here anymore.....

[GliderGuider]

5. With apologies to Tom Lehrer...

Smut!
Give me smut and nothing but!
A dirty novel I can't shut,
If it's uncut,
and unsubt- le.

I've never quibbled
If it was ribald,
I would devour where others merely nibbled.
As the judge remarked the day that he
acquitted my Aunt Hortense,
"To be smut
It must be ut-
Terly without redeeming social importance."

Por-
Nographic pictures I adore.
Indecent magazines galore,
I like them more
If they're hard core.

(Bring on the obscene movies, murals, postcards, neckties,
samplers, stained-glass windows, tattoos, anything!
More, more, I'm still not satisfied!)

Stories of tortures
Used by debauchers,
Lurid, licentious, and vile,
Make me smile.
Novels that pander
To my taste for candor
Give me a pleasure sublime.
(Let's face it, I love slime.)

All books can be indecent books
Though recent books are bolder,
For filth (I'm glad to say) is in
the mind of the beholder.
When correctly viewed,
Everything is lewd.
(I could tell you things about Peter Pan,
And the Wizard of Oz, there's a dirty old man!)

I thrill
To any book like Fanny Hill,
And I suppose I always will,
If it is swill
And really fil
thy.

Who needs a hobby like tennis or philately?
I've got a hobby: rereading Lady Chatterley.
But now they're trying to take it all
away from us unless
We take a stand, and hand in hand
we fight for freedom of the press.
In other words,

Smut! (I love it)
Ah, the adventures of a slut.
Oh, I'm a market they can't glut,
I don't know what
Compares with smut.

Hip hip hooray!
Let's hear it for the Supreme Court!
Don't let them take it away!

****************************************

What? Not THAT kind of smut? Oh.
Never mind...