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Show Under Tight Security- Ag Scientists Girding Against Alien Invaders Scientists arid workers aren't immune to precautionary measures meas-ures themselves. Showers are required upon entering and leaving the greenhouses to prevent pre-vent outside infections from being introduced inside the facilities fa-cilities and to keep foreign organisms or-ganisms from hitchhiking outside. out-side. Special clothing must be worn by personnel while in the greenhouses and labs, and left there for steam sterilizing before be-fore laundering. If all these precautions sound unnecessary, consider the case of stem rust disease. Dr. King-solver King-solver cites it as a classic example ex-ample of a plant disease that "got away." It could have come 'vith the wheat brought to this country by early settlers, or it may have been introduced here repeatedly repeat-edly by foreign wheat varieties obtained at various times in U.S. history. Regardless of how it arrived, . this foreign plant disease today regularly destroys about 4 of the U.S. wheat crop losses that cost growers some $80 million mil-lion in an average year. Security precautions at government gov-ernment facilities in Frederick, Md., are probably unlike those anywhere else in the world. And for good reason: scientists scien-tists there are studying some major diseases that affect crops in foreign countries but haven't yet become established here. The research effort is a form of preventive medicine aimed at averting serious crop shortages short-ages in this country. Increasing world travel and international trade have multiplied multi-plied the risks of foreign plant diseases invading the U.S. and wiping out thousands of crop acres before anyone can identify iden-tify them and find a solution. "We must assume that foreign for-eign pathogens will gain entrance en-trance sooner or later," says Charles H. Kingsolver, head of the Agricultural Research Service's Serv-ice's plant disease lab at Frederick. Fred-erick. "We need to know in advance ad-vance how big a threat a disease dis-ease will be in this country and how it can be handled if it does get in." Dr. Kingsolver and his staff have already reviewed literature litera-ture on more than 1,000 pathogens path-ogens that infect crops over seas. Those considered most dangerous to corn, soybeans, and wheat have been chosen for the scientists' first studies. Their approach is to study how a disease operates and progresses, pro-gresses, and then develop coun-termeasures coun-termeasures to control it. As many as 10 different pathogens path-ogens can be studied simultaneously simulta-neously in isolated units within the center's specially designed greenhouses. Equipped with double-thick safety glass, they have special filters to trap the .tiniest of air particles. As one scientist put it, "For bacteria to get through these filters . would be like a thick telephone book going through a keyhole." Air pressure in the facilities is kept lower than that of the outside atmosphere as an additional addi-tional precaution. If a small leak should develop anywhere in the buildings, air would be drawn inward instead of escaping escap-ing to the outside. All waste water is flushed through a special sewer system where it goes through a steam sterilizer before entering the conventional sewage treatment plant. i |