If you don’t, you might introduce a new strain of rust or other disease, Professor Robert Park, the director of Australia’s cereal rust programme warned growers at the Foundation of Arable Research’s recent round of autumn trial results meetings.
“If you’ve been in a wheat field [overseas] and come home and walk about in your own wheat crops and don’t wash your clothing first you could inadvertently be inoculating your wheat crop with a novel pathogen,” he told the Timaru meeting.
Park is in New Zealand to shed light on the strains of rust circulating in our cereal crops after a decade-long biosecurity-driven ban on sending samples from New Zealand to Australia for analysis.
“We haven’t been able to test for ten years,” explained FAR’s Nick Poole.
In contrast, Australia, the US, and other major cereal producing nations keep close tabs on the strains, races and pathotypes of the disease in their crops, enabling them to trace where outbreaks originate and alert growers to the emergence of
