HAYS, Kan., May 28, 2004 (The Wichita Eagle - Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News via COMTEX) -- As if drought, freeze, army cutworms, streak mosaic and Russian aphids weren't enough, there's a new pest in the wheatfields of western Kansas this year.

"We're pretty sure it's a virus," said Kansas State University wheat breeder Joe Martin, who works at the Kansas State University research station at Hays. "It showed up early and, at first glance, we thought it was streak mosaic. But it's not. It kills the oldest leaves of the plant and finally kills the head."

Martin said he's seen evidence of the pathogen in virtually every field he's checked in western Kansas.

"The good news is, it's not prevalent in the fields. It's very spotty," he said. "But it's everywhere."

Martin said farmers may have mistaken the early symptoms for wheat streak, which makes leaves turn yellow and die, and mistakenly attributed the later head death to freeze. He encouraged producers to be on the lookout in their fields.

Researchers have no idea what the pathogen is, where it came from or how it spreads.

Dallas Seifers, professor of plant pathology at Fort Hays State University, is doing most of the research to try to determine exactly what the pest is and how it works.

"Right now, our biggest job is to maintain a supply of it long enough that we can sequence the symptomatic protein," he said.

Most of the infected plants in wheatfields are already dead, he said.

Seifers has attempted to create symptomatic plants in the laboratory to increase the supply of the pathogen for research but has not been entirely successful, he said.

"The worst-case scenario is I won't be able to maintain it long enough, and I'll have to wait until next spring and start over," Seifers said.

The process of trying to identify the pathogen is to isolate the symptomatic protein, sequence it, then scan it against the sequence of known pathogens to see if it's a match or at least in the same family.

"It's possible that this is something that has been identified somewhere else in the world, even something that has shown up in a different crop, corn or rice or something," Seifers said.

Seifers said he is getting help from Canadian scientists.

"We have a research partnership with virologists in Winnipeg," he said. "They have great sequencing capabilities, and they're helping us."

Seifers said there is a possibility that the pathogen is showing up this year because of the season's unusual weather patterns and that it won't show up in a normal year.

"We're just happy that it is not in large enough numbers to have an economic impact this year, and we hope it will be spotty if it shows up next year," he said.

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