Cereal Rust Management for Improving Global Food Security

Dear Colleagues,

World food security will remain a challenge in future as the human population continues to grow and is expected to reach 8.5 billion by 2,030. Among various strategies to tackle food security, increased food production of major cereals stay as one of the main priorities for a vast majority of national governments and international organizations. Rust diseases have been ongoing problems for production of major cereals (wheat, barley, oats, rye and triticale) and can cause significant yield and quality losses. The rust pathogens also pose serious biosecurity risks because they are air-borne, and can spread rapidly over long distances and adapt quickly.

Over last hundred years, extensive progress made in the disciplines of rust taxonomy, pathology, genetics, molecular biology and plant breeding has helped partially in developing eco-friendly and sustainable rust control strategies. With the advances in genome sequencing, host pathogen molecular interactions, better understanding of non-host resistance, cytogenetic manipulations and gene cloning, there lies an enormous potential in developing new technologies and tools for cereal improvement, and mitigating risks posed by the rust diseases.

This special issue of Agronomy Journal will feature on ‘Cereal Rust Management for Improving Global Food Security’. We invite experts and researchers to contribute original research, reviews and opinion pieces covering all related topics including rust surveillance, race analysis and monitoring systems, host pathogen interactions, resistance gene mapping and cloning, sources of resistance, gene discovery, breeding for resistance and international collaboration and networks to manage cereal rusts.

Dr. Davinder Singh
Guest Editor

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