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Even 175 years after Ireland's devastating famine caused by an introduced potato blight, we're still struggling to combat these diseases.

Researchers believe that in the 1840s a strain of the pathogen Phytophthora infestans, which causes potato blight, followed trade routes from Mexico to Belgium, where it began damaging crops.

Von Hippel begins with efforts to tackle the causes of potato blight, which triggered the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s, and vector-borne diseases such as malaria, yellow fever and typhus.

“Pythium is a disease of plants, too. This organism is similar to the organism that caused the potato blight in Ireland in the 1800s.”

Most potatoes grown in Ireland were of a single variety, the Irish Lumper, which had no inherent resistance to Phytophthora infestans, the microorganism that causes potato blight.