Importance
If uncontrolled, loose smut can wipe out entire crops, since it replaces the grain. In areas where people depend on their grain crops for survival and don't have the money or technology resources to control it, the disease can be devastating. Not only does it wipe out the crop, growers cannot even try again next year since any seeds they were able to harvest will be infected and will not produce seed the following season.
Loose smut has recently become a more serious problem in the Ladakh region in the Himalayan mountains of India. This area has been particularly affected by global climate change and has experienced many new crop pests and diseases because of it. Barley is an important staple crop in this region and although loose smut is not the most prevalent disease of barley in the region, it has the potential to develop into a more serious problem in coming years.
In places like the United States where there are ample resources and technologies such as fungicide seed treatment, loose smut is not an especially important disease.
Read more about this topic: Loose Smut
Famous quotes containing the word importance:
“I am not sure that it is of the first importance that you should be happy. Many an unhappy man has been of deep service to himself and to the world.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“An interesting play cannot in the nature of things mean anything but a play in which problems of conduct and character of personal importance to the audience are raised and suggestively discussed.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“More than ten million women march to work every morning side by side with the men. Steadily the importance of women is gaining not only in the routine tasks of industry but in executive responsibility. I include also the woman who stays at home as the guardian of the welfare of the family. She is a partner in the job and wages. Women constitute a part of our industrial achievement.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)