Ep. 154 Spooky plant diseases: Diseases that have changed the course of history | #GoodGrowing
Welcome to the Good Growing podcast. I am Chris Enroth, horticulture educator with University of Illinois Extension coming at you from Macomb, Illinois, and we have got a great show for you today. I am stuck to everything covered in syrup. Your resident waffle expert here today is our Halloween episode, and so I am dressed up in the height of fashion, I would say. I have spent, weeks and weeks putting this costume together, and then I I ordered something online, and and this showed up.
Chris Enroth:So, I'm a waffle. If you're listening, we'll leave a link below for you to go and watch this on YouTube. And you know I am not doing this by myself. I am joined as always every single week by horticulture educator, Yukon Cornelius in Jacksonville. Yukon, welcome to the show.
Ken Johnson:Well, thank you. It's it's good to see you. Waffleman.
Chris Enroth:It's good to see you, prospector. You have a friend behind you.
Ken Johnson:I decided the the bumble came with for the podcast, so should be good.
Chris Enroth:Well, very good. So have you been prospecting recently?
Ken Johnson:No. I haven't I haven't had time. Maybe No. Maybe this weekend, I'll get you some prospecting once that cools off.
Chris Enroth:What's too hot? Pickaxe.
Ken Johnson:It's too hot right now for this.
Chris Enroth:It is too hot. Ah, there it is. What's it taste like? Doesn't he lick it? Yeah.
Chris Enroth:No. Oh, yes. Oh my goodness. So you are the spitting image of Yukon Cornelius. So that this is this is the best thing that can happen right now.
Chris Enroth:A waffle and Yukon Cornelius sitting here chatting on a podcast.
Ken Johnson:Figured I might as well do it before my beard turns completely white, and I don't have to switch to Santa Claus. So
Chris Enroth:That's right. Yes. Well, at least you come built in with everything you need. So yeah. Well, today, Ken Johnson, we will be, chatting about some spooky plant diseases and some things that have happened in history that might have written, or or changed the course of of of things that were to be, and so but that's how they are now.
Chris Enroth:And so here to talk to us about some of these spooky plant diseases, we have doctor Chelsea Harbach from Iowa State University. I don't know if I should say Royal Academy, but, Chelsea, welcome to the show.
Chelsea Harbach:Hi, Chris. Hi, Yukon. Hello.
Chris Enroth:Well, we are so happy to have you here, Chelsea. And could you describe to our our listeners? Our viewers can see you, but describe to our listeners, who are you and what are you wearing today?
Chelsea Harbach:So, I'm Chelsea. I'm, as you mentioned, here at Iowa State University. I might look familiar. I've done a couple podcasts with these guys before when I was a commercial egg extension educator for University of Illinois. I, got a new job almost almost exactly a year ago.
Chelsea Harbach:My first day here at Iowa State as a plant disease diagnostician was on Halloween of last year. I didn't dress up last year. I'm gonna dress up this year, and this is what I'm gonna wear. Same thing I'm wearing now, which is my corgi costume. It's just kinda my my default go to corgi onesie that is complete with the tail and everything.
Chris Enroth:Gotta have the tail. Yeah.
Chelsea Harbach:Mhmm. Yeah. Just a little just a little one.
Chris Enroth:Yep. Well, it gets in the way as you're looking at the microscope and you're trying
Chelsea Harbach:to get comfortable. Yeah. Yep.
Chris Enroth:Well well, very nice. Well well, Ken and I, we visited you recently, Chelsea, and we just wanted to say we really did enjoy checking out your new digs. You have a fantastic operation there over at Iowa State University and their diagnostician clinic. And we we saw so much, we're we're very excited. So we're happy that you're still crossing the river to Illinois to chat with us today about plant disease.
Chelsea Harbach:Well, Illinois is my home state, so I will continue to hang out with you guys as long as you'll have me.
Chris Enroth:Yeah. As We'll
Ken Johnson:hold you to it.
Chris Enroth:Yes. And as Ken says, the corn tastes better here. So, well, Ken, I guess we should be diving into our spooky for this week. So would you mind kicking us off, please?
Ken Johnson:Yeah. So I think the the first one we're gonna talk about is, Salem witch trials and how plant disease or ergot ergot ergo, however you pronounce it, influenced all of that.
Chelsea Harbach:Yeah. So this is, you know, kind of debated by historians, but but there's a lot of people who believe that the Salem witch trials were a result of plant disease epidemic in Rye in the sixteen hundreds. So, you know, Salem witch trials obviously happened in Salem, Massachusetts. The year of, like, where most of the burnings took place was, like, late sixteen ninety two. By May 1693, nineteen people had been burned at the stake.
Chelsea Harbach:And people like my pathologists, some historians think that it's possible that conditions were favorable in in 1691, the year that the rye would have been sown and then harvested following in 1692, that the conditions were favorable for for a disease that's caused by a fungus to proliferate on the rye crop. And since it was early enough in human history where we didn't have any concept or knowledge of the fact that plants get sick, it's likely that people as they were harvesting this rye saw these blackened kernels kernels. They're also, like, blackened and elongated and didn't think anything of them of it. You know, had no idea that that was that was a fungus that they were harvesting and processing with the rest of the rye. And so so this ergot, like I said, is caused by a fungal pathogen.
Chelsea Harbach:The pathogen is Plaviceps purpurea, and this pathogen produces a couple of alkaloids, lysergic acid and ergotamine. Lysergic acid is like a precursor to LSD. So these are both, like, hallucinogenic, like, mycotoxins. And if if the the black fungal structures are harvested with the rest of the grain and processed into bread, you have obviously people eating mycotoxin contaminated bread. And as these are hallucinogenic, some of the other things that this fungus would cause included convulsions, spasms, the hallucinate hallucinations, kinda like a skin crawling sensation, and erratic behaviors.
Chelsea Harbach:So all these things which, you know, people could think that there's something, you know, prior to a lot of science. If you see these kinds of symptoms in a person or you might not know that they they're having a reaction to something they ate, you're gonna think that there's something supernatural going on with them. So people thought people thought witch back then. Now, again, this is kind of debated. If you go to the Salem witch trials website, they have a whole post about debunking the, like, contaminated grain theory or something like that, where they talk about how, you know, if the grain was contaminated, theoretically, everybody who's eating that rye bread would be getting contaminated bread.
Chelsea Harbach:There is a page that suggests that the the erratic behavior was seen in young girls whose immune systems hadn't fully developed, but that doesn't explain why, like, why don't we see it in young boys too? So so, yeah, it's it's kinda kinda debated whether this is something that actually happened, but the the idea is pretty sensational. And so I think that's why there's been the the the story has persisted, and it's so long ago that we can't we have no way of saying, like, definitively yes or no. This didn't happen. So people continue to to run with this story, and it is a fun story.
Chelsea Harbach:I mean, it's a fun theory, I think.
Chris Enroth:That happens to me every time I eat honey oat. So yes.
Chelsea Harbach:I sure hope not. Because of the disease so it's or so it's actually, it's actually so it's called rye induced ergotism, which is also known as Saint Anthony's fire. And you can get, gangrene as a result of ingesting ergot. So it's, like like, potentially, like, life threatening, not only, you know, if you're perceived as a witch, but also, like, you know, if you have a limb that turns gangrenous. So, yeah, hopefully, it doesn't happen to you every time you eat your bread.
Chris Enroth:So were were they blaming the the behavior of the young girls that had eaten the bread? Were they the ones the young girls the ones being persecuted, or were they wow. So I thought maybe they were pointing to someone else saying you're hurting the young girls, but it was the young girls. Wow.
Chelsea Harbach:That that's my understanding of what I've read, is that their, yeah, their erratic behavior was like, oh, they are doing witchy stuff.
Ken Johnson:Witches. So Mhmm. Before we freak everybody out, there's there's safeguards against this nowadays. Right?
Chelsea Harbach:Yes. Yeah. I mean, you know, now we know what what ergot is. It's really easy to separate ergot infected kernels from from regular kernels. So, you know, the the any any grain that goes for processing goes through, like, a seed cleaning process to separate out those foreign bodies, which would include those fungal bodies that are called sclerotia from the seed.
Chelsea Harbach:And there's even sometimes growers will get like, if you have well, okay. We so we have fungicides, which help. You know, a timely application of fungicides can help. But when when the grain gets harvested, if you take it to the elevator, you know, they're gonna kind of rate the quality of your your, like, lot of seed, and that includes, you know, the amount of foreign bodies, which includes, like, cracked green and and also, sclerotia, those fruiting bodies. Or not they're not fruiting bodies.
Chelsea Harbach:They're just fungal bodies. But yeah. Yeah. So we don't have to worry about it anymore. However, I have heard stories of so there's a I can't find the video online anymore, but on the American Phytopathological Society, retired plant pathology professor from University of Illinois, Wayne Peterson, who was a field crops pathologist, told a story about how he had he had ergot kernel or ergot sclerotia in his lab and and because he was also a teacher.
Chelsea Harbach:So, you know, he, like, kept these things in a sealed container for class, But he got a call from, University of Illinois police department one night, saying that, like, a student that worked for him, was, like, threatening his roommate, saying that, like, he was a demon or something and that, like, he had to, like, kill him. So something like that to that effect. And and, you know, they were like, we interviewed this guy, and he said that, you know, what he took was something from your lab. And Wayne was like, oh, this guy took some of my ergot sclerotia and had a bad trip. And, yeah.
Chelsea Harbach:So I think ergot sclerotia are probably kept a little, like, if people keep them for educational purposes, I'd I'd bet that people probably store them a little bit more securely nowadays.
Chris Enroth:Oh, fascinating. So now in my head, I'm seeing all of these puritanical witch hunter people, they're just tripping on some bad bread. It's like everybody was was really messed up.
Chelsea Harbach:Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. That's a theory. So, like, you know, if if maybe maybe it affected young people more if they didn't have, you know, as developed of an immune system.
Chelsea Harbach:And may I want like, it makes you wonder, like, if this theory holds, like, were there some, like, older, more mature people who were just having, like, a super mild trip that, like, you know, didn't have all the convulsions and stuff that maybe younger people did. I don't know. I don't know. We'll never know, but it's definitely a fun a fun theory to try and explain what happened back then because otherwise, like, I don't know. There's not a lot of reason for what happened.
Ken Johnson:Let's see. Mhmm. Build a time machine. Go back and find it. Yeah.
Chelsea Harbach:Right? I think I I don't
Chris Enroth:know if I wanna go back there.
Chelsea Harbach:Yeah. Yeah. I've I don't think I do either.
Ken Johnson:Bring your own bread.
Chris Enroth:Yeah. Bring your own bread. Yeah. I like, I can't drink the water. I'm not gonna eat anything.
Chris Enroth:You give me. So mhmm. Well, okay, Chelsea. Well, let's let's switch gears here, and let's talk about the the Irish potato famine. And just just how did that I guess, let's talk about how did that come about, and then how like, as I also wanna kinda dig into, like, how you as a pathologist dive into diagnosing plant disease.
Chris Enroth:And and so can you give us a backstory for the Irish potato famine, please?
Chelsea Harbach:Mhmm. Yeah. So, you know, I it's funny. I learned about the Irish potato famine in high school. I don't know.
Chelsea Harbach:Maybe even grade school. But when it was taught to me, at that point, like, they never mentioned like, okay. There was something that happened to the potatoes, but they never, like, said what. So, like, I had no idea what what plant pathology was until my second semester of junior year of college. And that's when I learned that the Irish potato famine, was a result.
Chelsea Harbach:Well, so there's there's a multitude of, like, political things that went into, kind of the the the situation that caused the Irish potato famine to be as impactful for the Irish as it was. But, you know, at its the Irish potato famine, like, wouldn't have happened if it weren't for a plant pathogen. Mhmm. So
Chris Enroth:And the English also. Those two
Chelsea Harbach:things together. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah.
Chelsea Harbach:Like, it it was definitely, like like, basically a recipe for disaster between the political stuff from the British. As a result of some of the political stuff, the Irish were pretty reliant on potato as, like, their sole source of sustenance. Potato is, like like, one of very few foods on which, like, a human can, like like, actually, like, survive by just, like, eating this one thing. And they were, like, very easy to grow in, like, any environment, any kind of soil. They were highly like, high yielding and, you know, would store over winter.
Chelsea Harbach:So they were, like, for the Irish at that time, a really good source of food given all the political stuff. The unfortunate thing is that they were relying on one single cultivar of potato, the lumper, which is like, if you go look at pictures of the lumper, like, is actually like a lumpy potato. It's kind of funny. So, basically, they had a monoculture across Ireland of a single type of potato. One one, like, set, like just it was just homogenous.
Chelsea Harbach:Like, there's yeah. You're you're really putting yourself at a big risk there. So they're not quite sure when the the pathogen that causes the Irish potato famine arrived in Ireland. They believe it was sometime after 1842, likely 1844. But the first the first, like, crop that they noticed a significant reduction in yield was in 1845 when they had, I believe, like, two thirds less or, like, two thirds of the crop was, like, gone because of the the pathogen.
Chelsea Harbach:And then the following year, they lost three quarters of the crop. And, and then the the environmental conditions, like, were not as great for the disease to occur in 1847, But because of the low yields in the years prior, they didn't have as much seed to plant. So even though they, had better conditions, they still didn't have enough potatoes to sustain the population. And then in 1848, they lost, like, a third of their yield because of the the pathogen. So so for a population that relied almost exclusively on on this single food source.
Chelsea Harbach:You can imagine the the devastation as far as hunger. They say, like, of the people that actually died in Ireland, most of the deaths were actually related to, like, illnesses as a result of being malnourished. So, you know, you not only do you have deaths just because of starvation, you also have deaths because of illness related to being hungry. And then there were a lot of people that emigrated from Ireland at the time as well, and then, some other refugees that, you know, had to find elsewhere to live. So they they they lost about, like, half of their population at the time.
Chelsea Harbach:I think they lost, 4,500,000 between deaths and, and the emigration. And it's something that I mean, the the Irish population only, like, within, like, the last two or three years got back up to the pre potato famine population. So it's been something that, you know, the the nation has struggled to, like, you know, build back from with, like, a lower population, but it also brought about kind of the the birth of plant pathology. So this was from this, like, disaster, I'll say, a scientist named Anton DeBerry, I believe he was a Scottish scientist, decided to look into this problem a little bit more. And he's the one that found found the pathogen.
Chelsea Harbach:I think at the time, he called it a fungus, but later we would, you know, separate fungi from oomycetes. But he he found the the pathogen or the the problem with the potatoes that was causing the the low yielding potatoes to be what we'll call a fungal like organism called Phytophthora infestans. So oh, and, like, another tricky thing about this disease and this problem is that the the like, Irish would harvest seemingly healthy potatoes that would later rot in storage. So, you know, they might think that they had enough had enough to overwinter, but the the pathogen, you know, is just kinda lurking and can still cause issues after harvest. So so, yeah, Anton DeBerry was the first we call him the father of plant pathology.
Chelsea Harbach:He was the first to do go through a process that we call Koch's postulates. This is this is a, like, basic concept in microbiology where but for plants, we'll say you, like, observe a plant with a problem and, like, note its symptoms. You isolate a pathogen from that tissue and characterize it, and then you take that pathogen that you've isolated and infect a healthy plant and and hopefully observe the same symptoms as you did in the first step. And then you re isolate the pathogen. So you're, like, confirming that, oh, yeah.
Chelsea Harbach:This is the thing that's causing the symptoms I'm seeing. So, so, yeah, that was the first first incidence that we had in history of Koch's postulates for plant pathogens, and led to a whole field of study on what makes plants sick.
Chris Enroth:And and that's why you're sitting there now in a corgi outfit. And then as do you use that same process, Koch's postulate, even today?
Chelsea Harbach:So in the diagnostic lab, we're we're using what scientists have, like, identified on plants in the past. So we we generally know, like, what pathogens cause disease on different plants. So when we isolate or observe symptoms on a plant, but generally isolation, and we can characterize whatever we isolate. And if we we know or we can we can associate things that we've isolated or detected with that plant and, like, the symptoms make sense, you know, imagine everything, that's where we stop. We don't have to go through the reinoculation and reisolation process because we have kind of an established list of or, like, established established known pathogens causing disease on different plants.
Chelsea Harbach:However, if we were to, you know, get a sample that we isolated something that's known to be a plant pathogen but not typically known to happen on that host, that's when we might go through Koch's postulates. And then we'd also do some molecular identification to complement that, and that's that's where we get the incidents or, like, the the publications of scientists putting out what we call first reports, where it's like the first report of this pathogen causing this disease on this host. And, those don't happen as often as they probably used to. They do publish them by state, so, you know, it depends on what state you're in. But pathogens aren't moving a whole lot to have, you know, those happen very frequently.
Ken Johnson:Saying this disease is still around today. Right? And it doesn't just affect potatoes.
Chelsea Harbach:Correct. It it affects solanaceous plants. So your potatoes, tomatoes, I believe it also infect or affects eggplant, but I know for sure tomato and potatoes. I believe in Wisconsin, they have, like, a late blight watch or or sorry. Yeah.
Chelsea Harbach:This is late blight. So there are two two blights on solanaceous crops, early blight and late blight. Early blights caused by a real fungus, late blights caused by this fungal like organism, and can be pretty, like, devastating. I believe in Wisconsin, they have some kind of a, like, late blight watch website where you can, like because they grow a lot of potatoes in Wisconsin. So so, yeah, it's something that we still have to worry about.
Chris Enroth:And then potatoes, it's so easy to spread because you cut a potato in half. Boom. You got two potato plants. And Yep. That that's just how it's so easy to propagate that, but they're genetically identical.
Chelsea Harbach:Mhmm. Yeah. That's how they think, it got to Ireland. So, obviously, the well, not obviously. I'll say, if you don't know potatoes, like, they originated from Peru, from South America.
Chelsea Harbach:And so, you know, they weren't originally they're not, like, native to Ireland. But because of, like, the increase in, like, global trade and, like, movement of of stuff in the eighteen hundreds, they believe that so, this disease, once they figured out it it was a disease, was pretty bad on on potatoes in the Eastern United States in the early eighteen forties. I forget which years. And then they they suspect that some seed stock or something was moved from the Eastern United States to Ireland that was infected without knowing it. That and that's likely how the pathogen found its way to Ireland to cause to cause the devastation.
Chelsea Harbach:And, you know, with any with any plant disease, having you have to have the right environmental conditions for the disease to be be really bad. And so it just I mean, that that plays into, like, the recipe for disaster, but that's something that you can't control as the environment. It just happened to be that there were a few years out of a handful of years that were really favorable to the disease, and it just caused I I can't imagine the amount of, like, pain and suffering that that caused.
Ken Johnson:Mhmm.
Chris Enroth:So okay. Random off the wall question. So we spend billions of dollars on our modern day kinda grain genetics that help to feed the world, do all that. Is that ever a risk for those? That some pathogen just coming through wiping it out if if the environment is favorable for something?
Chris Enroth:Or is that your job? You're, like, frontline making sure this doesn't happen.
Chelsea Harbach:Well, I believe that, you know, they do have, like, resistance in, like, potato and tomato. And the the, like, development of, like, epidemiological models to help predict when these things might be evident in addition to, you know, any, like, chemical sprays or seed treatments. Like, we we and then, like, crop rotation. Like, we have a lot of tools now that we know that these things can happen and that we can't control the environment. We we do a lot of other things to try and prevent it, limit it, or at least, like, be aware of when it might happen so we can implement different measures to manage it.
Chris Enroth:But the world needs juicy.
Chelsea Harbach:Mhmm. Like, pathologist. I'm not the potato person.
Chris Enroth:I'm calling you every time.
Ken Johnson:Well and and to further complicate it, this may be getting into the weeds too much. But isn't there different races and bio bars and all that stuff too? Yeah. That complicates the whole resistance and all that.
Chelsea Harbach:Yep. That's the same like, I I'm more familiar with, like, phytophthora and soybeans. And, yeah, it's the same thing. You've got, like, different different races, different, like, resistance genes in the the potatoes or tomatoes. And, yeah, there are some, like, some of those, like, genetic, what would we say, call them, like, groups of the pathogen that of are of a, like, genetic makeup that are more problematic than others.
Chelsea Harbach:And yeah. Yeah. It gets it gets complicated, and I'm not a potato expert. I do remember learning about that, though. Yeah.
Chelsea Harbach:Mhmm. I think it's, like, pretty pretty similar, like, across, like, Phytophthora's.
Ken Johnson:Alright. So I think we had one more disease that we're gonna talk about. And for me personally, I wouldn't be too upset if this happened.
Chris Enroth:But I'm terrified.
Ken Johnson:What about coffee? Is there a disease of of coffee that caused some problems for us?
Chelsea Harbach:Yeah. So this, this disease on coffee, the disease is called coffee leaf rust. It's been around pretty much, like, as long as coffee. And it is something that is becoming more problematic, largely with, like, climate change. So we have primarily two different species of cultivated coffee in the world.
Chelsea Harbach:We have coffea arabica and coffea canifera. Arabica cough or coffea arabica, we'll call Arabica. Coffea canifera, we call we'll call robusta. And and this fungus that causes this coffee leaf rust affects both species of coffee as well as up to 25 other species of cultivated coffee in the world. So it's it's not discriminatory across, like, coffees that it affects.
Chelsea Harbach:The the Robusta, cultivars are, tend to be more, tolerant to to the fungus, but there's no complete resistance to the fungus. And the Kaffia Arabica is is the tastier coffee. It's it's one that is cultivated at higher elevate like, needs to be cultivated at higher elevations to or it's just, like, where it needs to be cultivated. But but it's it's just it's the better tasting coffee. And this species is particularly susceptible to the coffee leaf rust fungus, which is has, like, I think one of the coolest names of, like, any plant, like, plant pathogen Latin binomial, the the, coffee leaf rust fungus is called Haemelia vastitrix, which just sounds really cool.
Ken Johnson:I love that name.
Chelsea Harbach:Yeah. It's so cool. And and so one of the the, like, tricky things I don't know. There's just a bunch of tricky things with this fungus. So, typically, rust fungi have can have, like, to complete their life cycle, they can either do it on one host, which they're called an autoecious, rust fungus, or they need two hosts to complete their life cycle.
Chelsea Harbach:So then they're in a heteroecious host. The weird thing about, coffee leaf rust is that, there's been no alternative host found, but it does produce so there are up to five spore types that rust can produce. The uridinia spores are the bright orange ones, that we tend to think of as, like, the rusty stuff. The tele spores are the iridinium spores turn into tele spores, like, get or eventually turn into tele spores, and then the tele spores produce basidia spores. You have sexual reproduction happening from a telospora to basidiospora.
Chelsea Harbach:However, we've only ever observed the coffee leaf rust fungus on coffee. So we have the what theoretically should be a genetically, like, homogenous fungus in coffee leaf rust that actually isn't genetically homogenous even though we can't find that alternative host where, you know, theoretically complete its life cycle and, you know, increase the genetic diversity of the fungus. And so what some researchers have found is this this they believe the Haemelia bastrichs to be what's called cryptosexual fungus, where they believe there's there's, like, a hidden meiosis or, like, you know, sexual reproductive like, interchanging of genes between nuclei happening in the uridinal stage. So we have a fungus that even though you would think it would be homogeneous genetically is actually, like, can be pretty diverse, which can cause issues with, you know, fungicide resistance or even, like, breeding programs. Like, if you're trying to breed resistance to the fungus, you still you don't have, like, a single a single genotype of the pathogen that you can try to breed resistance for.
Chelsea Harbach:And with climate change, this disease is becoming, much harder to manage in coffee. And I I heard someone say on a podcast somewhere that, like, coffee farmers are saying that, like, you know, we we we might only have, like, 30 harvest left, like, before, like, you know, we we just, like, can't do anymore because of this this fungus. So it could be really, really devastating. I love coffee. I can't tell you if the caffeine actually does anything for me because I can drink coffee and take a nap immediately afterwards.
Chelsea Harbach:I just love the flavor. And, I mean, coffee culture is huge in America, and I would say all over the world. So it would be a really, really scary thing to to lose coffee. What are we gonna do?
Chris Enroth:I don't know what we would do.
Ken Johnson:You end up like me.
Chris Enroth:And you're high on life.
Chelsea Harbach:Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So coffee leaf rust is actually, like, the reason that, like, the the British are tea drinkers. They they, you know, colonized they they called it Ceylon back in the day.
Chelsea Harbach:I believe it's modern day Sri Lanka. And decided, like, there were, like, coffee houses, they call them back in the day in Europe where, like, sophisticated people would meet and, like, talk ideas and stuff, talk shop, and they served coffee there. And so the British wanted to start growing coffee somewhere. They picked this island of Ceylon to grow coffee, which happened to be a perfect environment for coffee leaf rust. It decimated their coffee crop, and they found that environment to be much better for growing tea.
Chelsea Harbach:And so they gave up on coffee and became tea drinkers. So I guess if the Brits can deal with it, everybody else can. But will we be happy about it? No.
Chris Enroth:Nope. Mocha tea doesn't sound good. Yeah.
Chelsea Harbach:No. Give me a little chocolate
Chris Enroth:in my tea. Yeah.
Ken Johnson:He's gross.
Chelsea Harbach:Yeah. So it's a, it's a scary thing. There's I mean, like, other we could talk, you know, in another another day about some other like like, there's a threat to bananas because of plant disease. There there's a threat to oranges because of a plant disease. There's like like, plant diseases, cause can cause, some pretty big, I don't know, I would say, like, shifts or changes in in, you know, the global, the global food system, especially with how global globalized we are now.
Chris Enroth:And but, fortunately, when that happens, we don't start burning people at the stake.
Chelsea Harbach:So Yeah. We know we can do a lot better.
Chris Enroth:We've come that far. Yeah.
Chelsea Harbach:At least.
Chris Enroth:Yes. Yes. Oh my goodness.
Chelsea Harbach:I can't can't say we've, we've done a lot more other than being able to distinguish between ergotism and witchcraft.
Chris Enroth:Mhmm. Every day I try. You know? I'm making little baby steps. So, yep, I shun my children constantly.
Chris Enroth:That's just because they come home with the flu. It's obviously was given to them by some type of wizard.
Chelsea Harbach:Yeah. Mhmm. Okay. Well,
Chris Enroth:that was a lot of great information about some spooky plant diseases, and you've kind of primed us for a future spooky diseases with bananas and oranges and cacao. All that stuff is just yikes. Well, I will say the Good Growing podcast is a production of University of Illinois Extension edited this week by Ken Johnson. A special thank you. Doctor Chelsea Harbaugh, thank you so much for being with us, coming across the Mississippi River into Illinois to chat with us today.
Chris Enroth:Thank you so much.
Chelsea Harbach:Literally anytime. And can I plug real quick? My my friend and colleague has a podcast called I see dead plants, and he has an episode specifically on coffee leaf rust. That if you wanna know more about coffee leaf rust, I highly recommend listening to to that episode. It's really enjoyable.
Chelsea Harbach:Oh. I'm biased.
Chris Enroth:Oh, I know you are. Yes. You you kinda like those a lot. Yeah. And so we'll leave a link to I See Dead Plants in the show notes below.
Chris Enroth:I think when Ken and I visited, we actually met this gentleman. He just emerged from his office after recording an episode of I See Dead Plants. So, yes, it was a it's a good podcast. So folks, check it out. Then come and listen to the next one of these.
Chris Enroth:Yeah.
Chelsea Harbach:Yeah.
Chris Enroth:We don't make any money off of this. Not really. We just like we just like what you hearing our voices every day.
Chelsea Harbach:Mhmm.
Chris Enroth:And and, Ken, thank you very much for being with me as always every single week. This this week, dressed as Yukon Cornelius from the Rudolph show.
Ken Johnson:Yes. Thank you, Chelsea. It's been fun. Yeah. Looking forward
Chelsea Harbach:to doing
Ken Johnson:this again.
Chelsea Harbach:Having me. Yep. Anytime.
Ken Johnson:And, Chris, thank you, and let's do this again next week.
Chris Enroth:Oh, we shall do this again next week. We are gonna be talking about community tree care and how we can help train homeowners at Arborist with an upcoming webinar series. We're gonna be talking with Sarah Vogel and or Jenny Lee. One of them or both of them, we will find out next week. So listeners, thank you for doing what you do best, and that is listening, or if you're watching this on YouTube watching.
Chris Enroth:And as always, keep on growing. You guys sound really smart right now. I don't know what you're talking about, but okay.
Ken Johnson:I don't need to drink. Don't remember.
Creators and Guests
