What are Plant Rust Fungi?
The plant rusts form one of the largest natural groups of plant parasitic fungi (6,000-7,000 species), many causing severe diseases of our most important crops. Some examples are: the rusts of wheat, corn and other cereals; forage and range grasses and sugar cane; beans, soybeans, peanuts, and other legumes; various fruits and vegetables; coffee, and forest and plantation timber and pulp trees. Rusts probably attack more different kinds of wild and domesticated plants than any other natural fungus order. Because a rust species is usually highly host specific, i.e. attacking only one or a few closely related plant species, and may have up to six different and dissimilar spore forms and two unrelated hosts while completing its life cycle, the rusts are among the most complicated microorganisms.
