stem rust

noun

Plant Pathology.

1. any of several fungal diseases of plants affecting the stems, especially a disease of wheat and other grasses characterized by pustules of red and then black spores.

2. any of the fungi causing such a disease.

Word History and Origins

Origin of stem rust¹

First recorded in 1915–20

Example Sentences

Borlaug landed in the valley in the 1940s as an agricultural adviser for the Rockefeller Foundation while the farmers around him were beset by a fungus known as stem rust.

Read more on Washington Post

In oats, crown rust, stem rust, barley yellow dwarf virus, oat smut, and other diseases are seen in North America.

Read more on The Verge

Borlaug would later be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the years he had spent shuttling between Mexico City and the Yaqui Valley, growing thousands upon thousands of kinds of wheat, and carefully noting their traits: this kind resisted one type of stem rust, but not another; this kind produced good yields, but made bad bread; and so on.

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There she found the Rockefeller Foundation's Norman E Borlaug, who was trying to breed wheat which could resist stem rust, a disease that ruined many crops.

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A classic product of the Midwest land-grant colleges that are one of America’s greatest successes, he found his way to a dusty plant-breeding station in a desolate part of Mexico, where he figured out how to breed wheat that combined high yields with resistance to the ancient plague of stem rust.

Read more on New York Times