Farmers and ranchers in southwest Missouri are being urged to monitor livestock after ergot, a fungus that can be deadly for cattle, was spotted in several hayfields and pastures.

Last month's decree reinstating zero tolerance for ergot rattled world grain markets and threatened to disrupt Egypt's bread subsidy programme, on which tens of millions of the country's poorest rely.

Ergotism — ergot poisoning — had indeed been implicated in other outbreaks of bizarre behavior, such as the one that afflicted the small French town of Pont-Saint-Esprit in 1951.

The quarantine office of Egypt’s agriculture ministry, under the watch of Saad Moussa, has adopted a zero-tolerance stance regarding the commonly-occurring ergot fungus.

Egypt, the world’s largest buyer of wheat, has turned away two more cargoes of grain purportedly contaminated with fungus, just months after similar rejections led to confusion over import rules ...

That was our fungus,” Hazel said in the release. The fungus grows on morning glories and makes ergot alkaloids, which gives them their psychedelic activities, according to the release.

The cool, wet spring has provided good growing conditions for a fungus that grows on some plant seed heads. The plant that is most prevalent in the Ozarks on which the ergot fungus thrives is fescue.

Dallis grass’s toxicity is not from the grass but from a fungus inside the head of the flower. The seeds inside the seed head become infected with ergot, which is a neutralized fungus.

Farmers and ranchers in southwest Missouri are being urged to monitor livestock after ergot, a fungus that can be deadly for cattle, was spotted in several hayfields and pastures.

Dinosaurs 'got high on psychedelic fungus', fossil discovery reveals 100 million-year-old grass parasite had 'poisonous and mind-altering effects' ...

Traces of the ergot fungus were found, and even though they were within the permissible limits stipulated by the country's main state wheat buyer, the agriculture ministry warned that any level of ...

Egypt's ability to import one of its most essential commodities, wheat, has been thrown into question amid repeated failed tenders, a result of suppliers shunning the world's top buyer because of ...