Since the 1970s the war on fungal pathogens had primarily been fought with cultivar resistance and agrichemical fungicides, but Poole said that was changing.
The increasing prominence of agrichemical resistance in the newest fungicides had promised greater adoption of integrated disease management and the need to find new solutions for disease management, Pool told farmers at last month’s annual FAR conference.
“It is new innovations with genetics that look set to provide the step forward both in terms of germplasm and the fungicides themselves,” he said.
In breeding, more precise techniques could now edit genes using clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) technology.
The revolution in genetic techniques had also meant that rather than growing new cultivars to assess for favourable traits such as disease resistance, assessments could now be done in the seed itself allowing much faster selections.
“That revolution is happening at the moment, and it’s not just about the role of genetics in breeding – another revolution is going on, genetic analysis of the pathogen.”
“I have been waiting 30 years for this but I think it is about to deliver now in one shape or another.
“Yes, it’s exciting but we have got to get around the legislation,” Poole said.
Genetic technologies were not only enabling faster production of disease-resistant cultivars, they were providing a more detailed view of the fungal pathogen that infected crops.
“Instruments have now been developed that allow us to sample infected crops and determine both the presence and frequency of these mutations,” Poole said.
“These tools can be used in the field enabling the grower to accurately diagnose which fungicides should be used in less than an hour.”
Poole said this signalled a beginning as research now pushed forward with a genetic fungicide.
“This might finally be the genetic revolution that agriculture has been promised for the past three decades.”
AgResearch scientist Maureen O’Callaghan acknowledged that a wide range of pests and diseases affected arable cropping systems.
But she told farmers that globally increasing environmental and consumer pressures were leading to reductions in availability of chemical pesticide options for growers as pesticides were deregistered around the world.
The increasing cost of development and registration of new chemistries had discouraged investment in new pesticides and had driven rapid expansion in the market of biological products for pest control.
O’Callaghan said a six-year collaborative research programme was under way to develop biological products for management of some of New Zealand’s significant arable pests and diseases.
Laboratory and small-scale field trials had shown that prototype biopesticides, based on novel insecticidal bacteria, could act as effective alternatives to pesticides in wheat, maize, ryegrass, forage brassica and seed crops.
“In addition, we are investigating the use of selected beneficial endophytic fungi isolated from within maize and brassica plant tissues for protection of these crops.”
O’Callaghan said for biopesticides to be used in future integrated pest and disease-control strategies they needed to be cost effective and fit well with current practices.
“Our research is focused on developing formulations and delivery systems (seed treatments, granules and sprays) that maintain viability of the beneficial microbes during storage and following application to crops and coils.”
She said commercialisation of the prototype biopesticides currently under development would provide alternative environmentally benign options for future management of key arable pests and diseases.
