An unexpected ally… 😱

🧫 Every professional in the swine industry knows how vital grain crops are… After all, they’re on our family’s table and in the feeders of our swine! And as it turns out, we may very well have the most unexpected ally in our fight against crop losses: we could potentially have a virus on our side.

    • The ARS Application Technology Research Unit in Wooster, Ohio, and South Dakota State University in Brookings have discovered a strain of a fungal virus – "mycovirus" – that naturally infects the scab fungus and prevents it from releasing vomitoxin, a toxin that can contaminate the grain, reduce its point-of-sale value, or outright render it useless.

    • Let’s translate that to proper English (please): the virus that may be a biological control agent and offer a way to undermine a costly fungal threat to wheat, barley, and other small-grain crops.

🔬 In short, the laboratory and greenhouse experiment cultures that had been infected with the mycovirus strain grew slower than non-infected cultures, which may hint that it may indeed be the most unusual friend we could have found… Read about the whole study, in all its details, here.