Coffee producers have been invited to nuke their plants to create varieties that resist roya de cafe, the leaf rust that is sweeping Central America.
The International Atomic Energy Agency says it is putting on a two-week seminar to show coffee growers and plant breeders how to use atomic energy to create coffee plant mutants.
The main focus is on Arabica, the only variety that is grown in Costa Rica. Arabica is particularly susceptible to disease due to low genetic diversity among cultivated plants. Variety, said the commission.
Unlike genetically modified plants, the doses of radiation are designed to alter the plant’s existing genes to create something different.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization is hosting the seminar at its plant breeding lab in Seibersdorf, Austria.
The project, partially funded by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries Fund for International Development, is part of an effort to establish a global research and development network, with a core in Latin America, to help producing countries respond to coffee leaf rust, said the commission.
Roya de cafe (Hemileia vastatrix) is a fungus that showed up in in Kenya in 1861.
The fungus causes the coffee plant leaves to wither.
The disease that has cut Central American and Dominican Republic coffee production by 2.7 million sacks, according to the Instituto Interamericano de Cooperación para la Agricultura.
That is about 20 percent of the annual harvest.
Central America and Mexico
The current outbreak is the worst seen in Central America and Mexico since the fungal disease arrived in the region more than 40 years ago. Guatemala has joined Honduras and Costa Rica in declaring national emergencies over the disease.
