A fungus first discovered in the 1890s has now destroyed an estimated 70 percent of the date palm trees in Morocco.

Robert Thornburg, Iowa State associate professor of biochemistry and biophysics, leads a team of researchers working to stop the disease, called the Bayoud fungus. They are attempting to genetically engineer the date palm tree by inserting genes that will make it resistant to the fungus, according to an article in the alumni publication “The Iowa Stater.”

Mustapha Zenzami, a Moroccan scientist and a 1983 alumnus of ISU who has been researching at ISU since last October, said in the article that no other crop has as big an impact on people in the sub-Saharan areas of Morocco as the date palm tree.

“The trees provide shade, making gardening and livestock production possible. The leaves also are used for handmade crafts,” Zenzami said in the “Iowa Stater.” He added that without the date palms, people in the desert may be forced to move to the cities.

About 50 percent of Morocco is desert, according to the article.

Dates are a principal food source for people in the desert regions of Morocco.

In fact, said Thornburg, “Dates are the only agricultural crop that is specifically mentioned in (the ancient text) the Law Code of Hammurabi. For four thousand years there have been laws in the region dealing with how to treat the date palm trees and how to deal with people who mishandle them.”

The team, funded by a $317,000 grant from the Kingdom of Morocco, consists of Thornburg, Zenzami, and another researcher from Morocco, Mustapha Ait Chitt. Zenzami and Ait Chitt represent the Moroccan Royal Agricultural Domain.

Thornburg, a specialist in plant defenses, has been working in the area of host defense for 25 years. The Moroccan authorities approached Thornburg with their problem in February of 1996. The team began their group research last October.

Thornburg said what the team is trying to do is to make trees that can fight the fungus by using recombinant DNA technology. “We are trying to make ‘transgenetic’ plants by putting disease resistant genes into the plant,” he said. “No one has ever made a transgenetic palm tree before.”

“If successful we should be able to have trees that will fight back against the fungus,” he said.

Thornburg said that every different pathogen has its own strategy for invasion.

“The fungus invades the trees through the roots, migrates up through the vascular tissues in the plant, and then it kills the palm fronds, (the split-leaf pairs characteristic of palm trees), causing (the fronds) to turn white — and Bayoud is the Arabic term for white,” Thornburg said.

“It’s totally devastating their country,” said Thornburg, referring to the fungus. “It’s like what would happen if a disease came along and wiped out all of the corn in Iowa.”

They are just at the beginning of a multi-year project, Thornburg said. “Unfortunately, the date palm trees grow very slowly. Hopefully, in several years we will have a new breed of trees which are resistant to the fungus.”