Word: fungus
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...physicians, the fruit-growing San Joaquin Valley (part of California's great Central Valley) is less noted for its aliments than for its ailments. It was there that doctors found a strange disease of the lungs caused by fungus spores (coccidioidomycosis, or more simply, valley fever). There, too, they see each year a creeping plague, of Western equine encephalitis, commonly called sleeping sickness, an inflammation of the brain caused by a virus to which men and horses are especially vulnerable...
...healthy plants in a well-insulated container and measured their temperature after four hours. He found that the respiration of the leaves (their "breathing" of oygen) had raised their temperature at most 2.7° F. above the outside air. Then he put sick leaves, infected with virus or fungus diseases, in the chamber. In four hours they were running temperatures up to 6.3° F. Sick leaves, Dr. Yarwood believes, breathe more oxygen than healthy ones, and the added oxygen brings on the fever...
...cereal parasite." Pont-Saint-Esprit had been stricken by ergot poisoning, a medieval disease as old as its proud bridge, so old that it had almost been forgotten. Modern medicine knows about ergot, but has rarely seen it in the form of an epidemic disease.* It is a black fungus that grows on wet grain, contains chemicals that powerfully affect the blood vessels and the nervous system. Doctors often use ergot extracts to start contractions in the uterus in childbirth...
Rust has another way of wintering. When the weather begins to get cold in the north, the fungus produces black, cold-proof spores. These spend the winter on straw or stubble. In spring, they germinate, sending out small spores that infect barberry bushes. Up to 70 billion vigorous spores can form on an average barberry bush. Each spore can start a fast-spreading infection in a stand of wheat...
...fight rust is to eradicate barberry bushes in the wheat belt. Another is to hope that the weather will not be favorable for the fungus wintering in Texas. The Department of Agriculture, after taking a horrified look at the Race 156 situation, trusts neither of these methods. It is trying to breed wheat that can resist. By growing its new varieties in winter in the Imperial Valley, it gets two generations a year, speeds up the development process...