Antibiotic resistance in bacteria may soon force apple farmers to search for a new prescription to fight a deadly tree disease.
Resistance to the common antibiotic streptomycin is sweeping through apple and pear orchards, impairing farmers’ ability to fend off fire blight, says Patricia S. McManus, a plant pathologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Fire blight, a leading killer of fruit trees, is the reason farmers spray more than 11,000 kilograms of streptomycin on U.S.
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