Bioterrorism, agroterrorism, biological warfare, etc. who, what and why?

Bioterrorism, agroterrorism, biological warfare, etc. who, what and why?

       Bioterrorism is loosely defined here as the use or threat of use of biological agents, mainly pathogenic microorganisms  that could infect people and cause disease, and thereby, instil fear and terror in all of the populace. Bioterrorism may differ from biological warfare in that the latter is usually directed against the enemy armies and its purpose is to incapacitate or to kill the enemy soldiers, whereas in bioterrorism, the purpose is to frighten and terrorize civilian populations, although casualties in large number may or may not occur. The most vivid example of bioterrorism occurred in the fall of 2001 when persons in various positions in politics and the television news media in New york and Washington received letters through the mail containing spores of bacterium Bacillus anthracis, the cause of severe and often deadly anthrax disease. It became apparent at the time that the perpetrators of the anthrax bioterrorism, or others could easily expand to other forms of bioterrorism by either contaminating agricultural products such as vegetables, milk or meat on the farm or in the stores with microorganisms pathogenic to humans, which would scare the buyers away from such products (agroterrorism), or by spreading selected plant pathogenic microorganisms on certain crops, e.g. cereals, potatoes, and corn which they could infect and destroy to various extents, thereby causing various losses that would increase the fear of people.

            Biological warfare has been talked about for various decades and many of the larger countries have been producing and stockpiling pathogenic microorganisms, such as the anthrax bacterium, for potential use against the army of an enemy country with which they might go to war. At the same time, however several countries have been experimenting with and stockpiling microorganisms that can infect and destroy important staple food crops of many countries e.g. rice, potatoes, wheat, beans, etc. which would affect the availability of food and thereby survival of the people, or at least their will to fight and prolong the war. This type of agricultural biological warfare has revolved around the important pathogens of such crops, e.g. Magnaporthe grisea, the fungus causing blast disease of rice, Phytopthora infestans, the oomycete causing the late blight of potato, Puccinia graminis, the fungus causing the rust disease of wheat and other small grains.

              As the specialization of the crops in each area increases and as our knowledge of diseases of such crop increases, it becomes evident that such areas of countries become extremely vulnerable to agroterrorim or agrosabotage. This happens even if or specially if they grow relatively small areas of such specialty crops e.g. bananas, citrus, coffee and cacao which are the main export crop and the main sources of foreign currency for these countries. For each area producing such a crop there are pathogens of the crop elsewhere that if introduced, destroy the crop for the year to come and possibly forever. The pathogens that would be used on such clonal, genetically uniform, perennial crops are likely to be insect vectored bacteria, phytoplasmas or viruses. Such pathogens can be introduced into a field as a few bacteria - or virus carrying insect vectors that would feed on and infect some of the plants and then in the same or in subsequent years, multiply and spread the pathogen they carry to more plants over a continually expanding area.