The US Agriculture Department should encourage states to be more consistent in searching for signs of the soyabean rust fungus and in reporting their findings, a congressional agency said on Tuesday.
Soyabean rust arrived in the continental United States in late 2004, apparently carried from South America by hurricanes. During 2005, USDA used an Internet site, www.sbrusa.net, to report on the fungus' spread across the South, based in part on state monitoring of planted "sentinel" plots that allow detection of soya rust.
The surveillance program allowed experts to recommend when to use fungicides to best effect against the fungus. After reviewing last year's effort, the Government Accountability Office recommended USDA "provide additional guidance to state ASR (Asian soyabean rust) program managers on monitoring, testing and reporting on the incidence of ASR and ensure that a detailed action plan for managing ASR in 2006 is in place prior to the 2006 growing season."
Although USDA asked states to report at least once a week on soyabean rust, two states reported only four times during the entire growing season while another state filed 162 reports, or almost daily.
"Inconsistencies also occurred in the designation and placement of plots and the testing of samples for ASR," said GAO. Seen. Tom Harking, Iowa Democrat, requested the report out of concern about the potentially huge losses that farmers could see if rust spread throughout soyabean states.
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