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What is Fusarium graminearum, the fungus 2 Chinese researchers are charged with smuggling into the US?
Two Chinese researchers were charged with smuggling a fungus classified “as a potential agroterrorism weapon” that could decimate crops and impact human health into the US last summer in a wad of tissues, according to an FBI affidavit in support of the criminal complaint filed Tuesday.
Testing at an FBI laboratory discovered a sample containing the DNA sequence that “would allow a researcher to propagate live Fusarium graminearum,” a fungus that causes “head blight,” in the biological materials that Yunqing Jian, 33, and Zunyong Liu, 34, allegedly smuggled into the US, according to the complaint.
Fusarium head blight, or FHB, is a devastating disease for staple crops like wheat, barley, maize and rice. The fungus’ toxins can lead to “vomiting, liver damage, and reproductive defects in humans and livestock,” according to a news release from the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan.
Jian and Liu were charged with conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud the United States, smuggling goods into the United States, false statements and visa fraud for bringing in the fungus Fusarium graminearum from China, the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan said on Tuesday.
The criminal complaint does not allege that the defendants – who investigators say were in a relationship – had any plans to spread the fungus beyond the laboratory, but it said Liu was aware of the restrictions on the material and deliberately hid it in his backpack.
A devastating disease for staple crops
Fusarium graminearum is the most common cause of Fusarium head blight in North America and in many other parts of the world. The destructive disease, also called “scab,” has the capacity to “destroy a potentially high-yielding crop within a few weeks of harvest,” according to an article from the journal Molecular Plant Pathology published in 2004. It forms discolored lesions on the crops.
The US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan said the fungus “is responsible for billions of dollars in economic losses worldwide each year.” It is estimated that the losses for all crops in the Central United States and the northern Great Plains totaled $2.7 billion between 1998 to 2000, according to the article from the journal Molecular Plant Pathology.
The fungus spends the winter on infested crop residues like corn stalk or wheat straw.
Wet weather during the growing season causes the fungus to sprout spores, which are then windblown or water-splashed onto the spikes of wheat and barley, according to Gary Bergstrom, emeritus professor in the School of Integrative Plant Science Plant Pathology and Plant-Microbe Biology Section at Cornell University, who has previously published research on the head blight.
If wheat is infected during flowering, the fungus colonizes, killing the florets, and kernels don’t develop. If it is infected later, those plants produce diseased kernels that are shriveled and wilted.
Bergstrom told CNN the impact of the disease and the toxin each year is “like looking at the stock market. It goes up and down,” depending on weather patterns and other environmental details.
“But it has not gone away. The risk is still there. We do get losses every year,” he said Wednesday.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulates the importation of organisms that might negatively impact agriculture in the United States, prohibiting anyone from importing any organism that “directly or indirectly injures, causes damage to, or causes disease in a plant or plant product” without first applying for and obtaining a permit from the USDA, according to the complaint in the case.
The USDA requires a permit for the importation of Fusarium graminearum. According to records maintained by the USDA, the Chinese researchers now charged never applied for, nor were issued, a permit to import the pathogen, the complaint said.
cont'd
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/04/us/fusariam-graminearum-china-fungus