Zhishan Wu, quarantine officer for the new facility, looks forward to taking on some of the world's most devastating plant diseases.
To learn more about the new facility, watch the News Service video.
Putting pathogens in their place
A new quarantine facility will get a jump on plant diseases before they strike Minnesota
By Deane Morrison
November 9, 2007
The best way to keep highly infectious crop diseases out of Minnesota is to bring them into Minnesota. Bring them, that is, into the new Plant Pathology Containment Facility on the Twin Cities campus, which soon will quarantine crop-crippling pathogens that haven't yet arrived in Minnesota on their own. Inside the facility, which opened this week, researchers will study the pathogens and search for ways to manage the diseases they cause. It's all about giving researchers and farmers the tools to minimize the impact of pathogens before they arrive or become established in Minnesota or other locations. If licensed next year by the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, the facility will open for business under joint operation by the University of Minnesota and the Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA). "We've looked forward to this new facility for a long time," says Zhishan Wu, an MDA scientist and University adjunct assistant professor of emtomology who will be the quarantine officer for the building. "We have a couple of research programs waiting.They will deal with the pathogens Asian soybean rust, sudden oak death, and stem rust." The $6 million facility is the only public one of its kind in the Midwest. Three others currently operate in the United States--in Maryland, Florida and Hawaii. Built with funding from the Minnesota Legislature, the University, MDA, and the USDA Forest Service, the plant pathology facility was also championed by state farmers, notably member of the Minnesota Soybean Growers Association. "This is a perfect example of our land-grant mission to work with different sectors of the economy to enhance our quality of life," says R. Timothy Mulcahy, the University's vice president for research. "This is an important first for us with respect to working with diseases that have devastating economic effects on agriculture in the state and the world."
Playground for pathogens
With more and more land being taken for agriculture worldwide, plus frequent intercontinental travel, our planet is becoming a playground for pathogens. For example, Asian soybean rust, a fungal infection, spread from Asia and Africa across the Atlantic Ocean to South America. Its spores arrived in the southern United States in 2004, blown in from Brazil by hurricanes. Another reason why centers for studying exotic pathogens are crucial is that evolution is turning some pathogens into greater threats than they used to be. "Wheat grown in the United States is vulnerable to a new race of stem rust pathogen," says Carol Ishimaru, head of the University's Department of Plant Pathology. "The genetic resistance [of wheat plants to rust] has just run out. It had lasted since Norman Borlaug's work in the 1960s." Borlaug, a legendary plant breeder and Nobel Peace Prize-winning alumnus of the University, is keenly interested in the work of the facility, she adds. Worldwide, plant diseases destroy between 9 and 20 percent of crops, Ishimaru says. Much work to defeat the diseases, especially stem rust infections of small grains, involves researchers from around the world because developing countries are hardest hit."Wheat grown in the United States is vulnerable to a new race of stem rust pathogen," says Carol Ishimaru, head of the University's Department of Plant Pathology. "The genetic resistance [of wheat plants to rust] has just run out."
"New sources of resistance genes, in wheat and barley especially, could help farmers from the United States to Kenya," says Ishimaru.Where negative is nice
The new building is the final piece of the $24 million Plant Growth Facilities complex on the St. Paul campus. The complex also includes greenhouses and an Insect Quarantine Facility for the study of insect pests and means to control them. The insect facility, which opened in 2003 and holds a slightly lower biosecurity classification than the new building, is connected to the plant pathology facility by a common entrance. The plant containment facility has several design elements to control the movements of fungi, bacteria, viruses, and other plant pathogens. By entering through the insect facility, researchers will pass through its security and air filtration systems before they get to the higher-security plant pathology building. Once there, they will trade their clothes for disposable duds before entering work spaces.Also on the front
lines
The Twin Cities campus will soon have several other highly
biosecure facilities to study diseases. The Veterinary Diagnostic
Laboratory is about to open a necropsy facility to investigate
outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza ("bird flu") and
other diseases transmissible from nonhuman animals to people. The
Institute for Therapeutics Discovery and Development will soon open
a facility to screen about 250,000 compounds for activity against
various disease agents. In December 2009, the Medical Biosciences
building will open three labs suitable for procedures that require
a high level of biosecurity, such as culturing organisms or cells
and infecting animal models of diseases.