In a field of ripening wheat, Lutfi Çetin bends low, inspecting the leaves and stalks with the studied concentration of someone who knows what is at stake. His silver hair catches the light, and his sleeves remain deliberately unrolled to protect his arms from Türkiye’s blazing sun and the sharp awns of the wheat. Çetin has dedicated more than 30 years to rust research. Around him, the grain stands tall and still. But all is at risk of upcoming rust infections.
What you cannot see may be what kills the season. The rust may come again.
For generations, wheat has been the backbone of life in Central Asia and the Caucasus. It fills ovens, secures incomes and forms the quiet bedrock of national food security and nutrition. But wheat rusts — a collection of airborne fungal diseases with poetic names like yellow, leaf and stem — has become an intensifying threat across the region.
Carried by wind and precipitation and quick to evolve, these pathogens are no longer local problems. They are global adversaries.
“The airborne spores of rusts do not respect borders, as Norman Borlaug indicated,” says Fazil Dusunceli, Plant Pathologist for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), referring to the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize winner for his contribution to the Green Revolution. “The rust fungi mutate into new strains which travel in the air, creating new risks in different regions in their trail.”
The stakes are not theoretical, and the numbers tell a stark story. Each year, wheat rust diseases destroy up to 15 million tonnes of grain globally. In Tajikistan, for example, wheat fields stretch across some 300,000 hectares.
“If the wheat rust diseases are not controlled, we could lose 10-15% of our wheat production,” estimates Professor Salimzoda Amonullo, President of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences of Tajikistan.
Wheat rust is nothing new. Its lineage can be traced back thousands of years — etched into Roman festivals for the god Robigus and pleaded against in biblical lamentations. But what is new is its reach. New and increasingly more virulent rust strains are emerging faster than in the past and crossing borders and oceans with greater ease.
“The most efficient way to manage these diseases in the long term is through surveillance, monitoring new races and developing new wheat varieties resistant to these diseases,” says Kumarse Nazari, rust pathologist at the International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA).
Yellow rust thrives in wet and cool environments. Stem and leaf rust flourish in warmer regions. All are unforgiving.
Against this invisible threat, a very tangible coalition has formed. Supported by FAO and the Government of Türkiye, scientists, farmers and governments across Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have joined forces. Their goal: to build a frontline of resistance.
Over the past four years, national plant health agencies have received extensive training in rust monitoring, field diagnostics, integrated management and resistance breeding. New tools have been introduced. Old practices refined. Farmers are learning how to recognize the earliest signs of infection, researchers how to track the emergence of new races.
“The training helped us keep pace with how wheat rust is evolving,” says Saykal Bobusheva, Assistant Professor at Kyrgyz-Turkish Manas University in Kyrgyzstan. “We’ve learned how to detect infections, respond more effectively and exchange knowledge with our neighbors. It’s strengthened our research and our regional cooperation.”
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The knowledge didn’t stay in the classroom. It moved into fields, labs and greenhouses. Hundreds of farmers and more than 140 plant health experts across the region are now working with shared contingency plans, tracking disease in real time and — perhaps most critically — building the kind of trust that makes cross-border collaboration possible.
The FAO-coordinated programme, funded by the FAO-Türkiye Partnership Programme, has connected national teams to global experts at ICARDA, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT), the Regional Cereal Rust Research Centre (RCRRC), and the International Winter Wheat Improvement Programme (IWWIP).
Workshops held in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have focused on developing national strategies and contingency plans. What once would have been isolated field reports are now inputs into regional alerts, enabling a coordinated response.
The fight against wheat rust diseases is not one that can be won by any single country. As Ahmet Volkan Güngören, of Türkiye’s Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, puts it: “It is not possible for countries to achieve results on their own in the fight against wheat rust diseases. These require regional and international collaboration.”
By sharing data, expertise and insights, these entities work together to enhance the prevention and management of wheat rust diseases across the region. The series of workshops on developing national strategies and contingency plans, including the recent sessions in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Türkiye, are enhancing the preparedness of countries to address wheat rust more effectively.
Most recently, the experts from CIMMYT, ICARDA and RCRRC trained 33 technical officers from these countries on developing wheat varieties that are resistant to rust diseases. The officers were introduced to an effective speed breeding technique that reduces the duration of the breeding process by two to three years.
This training has also laid the groundwork for future collaboration among the countries in improving the resilience of wheat production in the long term.
These are all signs of progress, and breeding programmes are beginning to show promise in local trials. Distribution of promising new varieties is on the horizon. But the work is far from over. The pathogens adapt. The pressure remains. The fungi do not sleep.
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This article was originally published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and is republished here as part of our editorial collaboration with the FAO.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed here by the authors are their own, not those of Impakter.com — In the Cover Photo: A wheat field. Cover Photo Credit: James Wainscoat.
