full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Mennat El Ghalid: How fungi recognize (and infect) plants

Unscramble the Blue Letters


"Will the bighlt end the chestnut? The farmers rather guess not. It keeps smouldering at the roots And sending up new shoots Till another parasite Shall come to end the blight."

At the beginning of the 20th century, the eastern American ctesnhut population, counting nearly four billion trees, was coetelmlpy decimated by a fungal infection. Fungi are the most destructive peonthags of plants, including crops of major ecmniooc importance. Can you imagine that today, crop losses associated with fuagnl ioitcfnen are estimated at billions of dollars per year, worldwide? That represents enough food cralieos to feed half a billion people. And this leads to severe repercussions, including episodes of famine in deloivenpg countries, large reduction of income for farmers and distributors, high preics for crnuseoms and risk of exposure to mycotoxin, poison produced by fungi.

Open Cloze


"Will the ______ end the chestnut? The farmers rather guess not. It keeps smouldering at the roots And sending up new shoots Till another parasite Shall come to end the blight."

At the beginning of the 20th century, the eastern American ________ population, counting nearly four billion trees, was __________ decimated by a fungal infection. Fungi are the most destructive _________ of plants, including crops of major ________ importance. Can you imagine that today, crop losses associated with ______ _________ are estimated at billions of dollars per year, worldwide? That represents enough food ________ to feed half a billion people. And this leads to severe repercussions, including episodes of famine in __________ countries, large reduction of income for farmers and distributors, high ______ for _________ and risk of exposure to mycotoxin, poison produced by fungi.

Solution


  1. infection
  2. consumers
  3. pathogens
  4. blight
  5. economic
  6. chestnut
  7. completely
  8. calories
  9. prices
  10. fungal
  11. developing

Original Text


"Will the blight end the chestnut? The farmers rather guess not. It keeps smouldering at the roots And sending up new shoots Till another parasite Shall come to end the blight."

At the beginning of the 20th century, the eastern American chestnut population, counting nearly four billion trees, was completely decimated by a fungal infection. Fungi are the most destructive pathogens of plants, including crops of major economic importance. Can you imagine that today, crop losses associated with fungal infection are estimated at billions of dollars per year, worldwide? That represents enough food calories to feed half a billion people. And this leads to severe repercussions, including episodes of famine in developing countries, large reduction of income for farmers and distributors, high prices for consumers and risk of exposure to mycotoxin, poison produced by fungi.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
fungal infection 2
antifungal treatments 2


Important Words


  1. american
  2. beginning
  3. billion
  4. billions
  5. blight
  6. calories
  7. century
  8. chestnut
  9. completely
  10. consumers
  11. counting
  12. countries
  13. crop
  14. crops
  15. decimated
  16. destructive
  17. developing
  18. distributors
  19. dollars
  20. eastern
  21. economic
  22. episodes
  23. estimated
  24. exposure
  25. famine
  26. farmers
  27. feed
  28. food
  29. fungal
  30. fungi
  31. guess
  32. high
  33. imagine
  34. importance
  35. including
  36. income
  37. infection
  38. large
  39. leads
  40. losses
  41. major
  42. mycotoxin
  43. parasite
  44. pathogens
  45. people
  46. plants
  47. poison
  48. population
  49. prices
  50. produced
  51. reduction
  52. repercussions
  53. represents
  54. risk
  55. roots
  56. sending
  57. severe
  58. shoots
  59. smouldering
  60. today
  61. trees
  62. worldwide
  63. year