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A comment on Unleashing an Epidemic to Kill Tumbleweeds. Parent comment

Re:Unleashing an Epidemic to Kill Tumbleweeds by vinchuco on Thursday September 25, 2014 @04:42PM (#8369635)
I can see how it could be worrysome. Playing around with a food network could result in unintended consequences. A couple of searches:

"Glomerella cingulata (sexual version of the fungi they want to spread) (...) causes disease on many different hosts including quince and apple..." [2]

"The United States is the second-leading producer (of apples), with more than 6% of world production. " [3]

Link to article [1]

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomerella_cingulata

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple

[1] http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10526-011-9399-x#p...

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Re:Unleashing an Epidemic to Kill Tumbleweeds by nemo on Thursday September 25, 2014 @06:52PM (#8370273)
They want to release Colletotrichum salsolae. Glomerella cingulata's teleomorph is Colletotrichum gloeosporioides - different species. Since it's the Ag. Research Service that's interested, the first thing they'd test on are Ag. species.

Also, hopefully the dual-naming of fungi by anamorph/teleomorph will go away some day. It's really weird to refer to a species by two separate taxonomical names.

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Re:Unleashing an Epidemic to Kill Tumbleweeds by JoeAnzalone on Thursday September 25, 2014 @05:45PM (#8369910)
> Playing around with a food network could result in unintended consequences.

Yeah, just look what happened when they let Guy Fieri on there!

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