SCIENTISTS at Harpenden's Rothamsted Research have been using its historical archive of seeds and leaves to probe how a fungus affecting crops changes over hundreds of years.
Using the store of samples taken from on site cultivations from 1860 onwards, they have been investigating how the fungal disease Phaeosphaeria nodorum, which causes blotches on wheat leaves, spreads.
They have discovered that the fungus can change its propagation method, switching between leaf-to leaf, which needs higher spore production, and seed-to seed, for which spores are reduced.
Early in the 20th Century, the Rothamsted archive shows, the fungus switched from the leaf to the seed method, but it switched back again in about 1960.
Dr Frank Van Den Bosch said "This finding has implications for human, animal and plant diseases. An ill judged change in a disease control programme can cause the pathogen to evolve a new, possibly more damaging, combination of transmission modes. Similarly, environmental cues, such as climate change, can shift the balance between transmission modes with adverse effects on human, animal and plant health."
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