Over 80 percent of 57 wheat varieties tested in Britain are susceptible to the strain of stem rust, according to a study. Stem rust can devastate wheat, the source of food and livelihoods for more than 1 billion people in developing countries.

A devastating disease that attacks barley and wheat-the world’s most widely grown crop - could re-emerge in Britain, scientists warned. Over 80 percent of 57 wheat varieties tested in Britain are susceptible to the strain of stem rust that was discovered in an infected plant in Suffolk in 2013, the first time the disease has reappeared since 1955, scientists said. The same strain battered wheat crops in Ethiopia, and caused smaller outbreaks in Sweden, Denmark and Germany in 2013, a study in the journal Communications Biology said. These outbreaks, as well as the infection in Britain, are “a warning sign” to take immediate action, Diane Saunders, a plant pathologist at the UK-based John Innes Centre and lead author of the study, told the Reuters. Stem rust can devastate wheat, the source of food and livelihoods for more than 1 billion people in developing countries, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). It could wipe out 70 percent or more of the crop, turning a healthy looking crop, only weeks away from harvest, into a tangle of black stems and shriveled grains, the agency said. The risks posed by wheat rusts are growing, with modern versions of the fungus becoming ever more virulent, evolving to adapt to the earth’s higher temperatures, the FAO said. Changes in climate conditions over the past 25 years, such as warming temperatures and wetter summers, have created “increasingly conducive conditions for infection” in Britain and Europe, the researchers added.