FUNGI MAY BE THE NEWEST RECRUITS IN WAR ON DRUGS

Colombia: Scientists Caution That The Organisms, Which Kill Specific
Crops, Could Later Threaten Others

BOGOTA, Colombia--The next weapon in the arsenal of the war against
drugs may well be biological.

Scientists have discovered three microscopic fungi that will cause
marijuana plants, opium poppies and coca bushes to turn yellow, drop
their leaves and wither.

While opponents believe that use of such fungi could cause an
environmental disaster, supporters see it as a benevolent alternative
to fumigation, which defoliates all plants--including food crops--
underneath the fine mist sprayed by planes.

As President Clinton visits Colombia today to formally initiate a
controversial $1.3-billion anti-narcotics aid package, the potential
use of fungi is becoming an important part of the debate over the most
effective way to halt drug production and trafficking. Colombia is the
world's leading producer of cocaine.

"It was a godsend," said a U.S. official who saw the effects of an anti-
coca fungus in Peru's Upper Huallaga Valley at the beginning of the
1990s. The fungus wiped out 30% of the coca crop, and the leaves that
survived had lower levels of alkaloid, the active ingredient in
cocaine, says the official, whose life has been threatened because of
his anti-drug work.

The fungus strangles plants by blocking their vascular systems, much
like cutting off a person's blood supply.

But ecologists worry: What happens afterward?

"It could have an impact on other vegetation when it finishes off the
coca," said a Colombian government biologist. "This is a living
organism that will transform itself in order to survive.

Field tests are a risk for Colombia and the entire Amazon basin."

With that argument, Colombia--like Florida, which is a significant
marijuana producer--has refused to permit field testing of anti-drug
fungi. But laboratory testing continues in controlled environments as
far flung as Uzbekistan and Hawaii.

Biologists are concerned that the Colombian government, recipient of
two-thirds of the funds in the U.S. anti-drug aid package, will not be
able to resist pressure to test the anti-coca fungus outside the
laboratory. "We say 'no,' but then it turns out to be 'yes,' " warned
agronomist Pedro Leon Gomez.

The anti-coca and anti-marijuana fungi are cousins in a family that is
the plant world's equivalent of the Jesse James gang. Members of the
Fusarium oxysporum clan have ravaged cotton in Australia, muskmelon in
California, beans in Spain and even carnations and banana trees in
Colombia.

However, each fungus is choosy about its victim, experience indicates,
generally preferring to attack only one species of plant. The fungus
that destroyed the carnations here did not bother other flowers, and
the strangled banana trees were replaced by another variety, an
effective but expensive solution.

But scientists are still experimenting to figure out how adaptable each
fungus can be in different soils and climates.

Since the fungus lives in the soil, it goes about its deadly work
despite rain or wind, a major advantage over pesticides.

The drawbacks of other eradication methods may be one of the factors
that will make biological methods more tempting. During the past two
years that U.S. Defense Department contractors have been spraying
pesticides on Colombian coca fields, production has actually risen by
half.

Nor have efforts to persuade coca farmers to grow other crops been
particularly successful. "Gains in establishing alternative crops were
modest in the extreme and worse yet when it came to eradication of drug
crops," according to an Inter-American Development Bank, or IDB,
evaluation of projects in Colombia from 1991 to 1996.

There are few indications of a major improvement in the past four
years, despite the availability of a $90-million IDB credit for such
projects. Only $28.5 million of that money has been used, according to
Colombian officials, because the credit requires matching funds and the
government here has not provided enough.

Still, a Colombian government biologist wary of the fungus insisted:
"This should only be considered if it were the last option available.
Have we tried all the other options?"

The fungus could undermine a potentially viable option that has not yet
been tried, warns agronomist Leon Gomez. Oil palms are among the few
cash crops that will grow in the same climate as coca.

Although hardly as profitable as illegal crops, palm oil does have a
guaranteed market, says the Cornell-educated Leon Gomez, who heads the
oil palm industry's research institute here.

The institute's main project for the past decade--$8 million worth of
research--has been to find a way to protect palm trees from a soil
fungus.

Referring to Fusarium oxysporum, he said, "This fungus is much more
aggressive than the one we are trying to manage now."

In fact, among the fungus family's best-known victims was the palm oil
industry in Nigeria and Zaire.

Leon Gomez says he could not in good conscience recommend that oil palm
farmers plant in a zone that was known to have been infested with even
a distant relative of that fungus. "The risk is just too high," he
said.

Florida officials came to the same conclusion about the anti-marijuana
cousin, prohibiting its use there last year. Their main concern was
that the fungus might mutate and attack other crops.

As work on the anti-marijuana and anti-coca fungi has stopped short of
field testing--U.S. and U.N. officials insist that a naturally
occurring strain is at work in Peru--research on an anti-poppy fungus
from a different family has begun to catch up.

The Institute of Genetics at Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan in
Central Asia, has tested Pleospora papaveracea on 150 plants closely
related to the opium poppy, from which heroin is derived, and has not
yet found another that the fungus harmed.

"The basic science is done or close to being done," said Howard Stead,
chief of the scientific section at the U.N. International Drug Control
Program, which sponsors the research.

Native to Uzbekistan, the fungus "has different rates of effectiveness,
depending on variables such as climatic conditions," he said.

The fungus still needs to be tested in areas where illicit crops grow,
he says. Both Colombia and the United States use biological controls
against pests that attack commercial crops, he says.

"We're talking about similar technologies, whether they are opium
poppies or coca bushes or weeds," he said. "When you are killing coca
bushes, there are interest groups that want to protect the coca bushes,
so questions are raised."

However, one of the Colombian biologists says experiences with
biological controls are exactly what have prompted his government's
objections to introducing a fungus.

"We introduced one ant to control another ant, and now the [new] ant is
a worse problem," he said, citing one example. "They ate the first
ants, and now they eat everything those ants ate.

"The fungus would not know why we brought it here or when it had
finished its job," he added. "We are trying to turn responsibility for
a problem of [drug] consumption into a biological problem. Since we as
humans cannot solve this problem, we want a fungus to solve it for us."