Brazil's government is spending an extra 1.5 million reais (US $565,000) to fight Asian soyabean rust disease by training producers to take control measures, the agriculture ministry said Friday. The airborne fungus, which can cut yields by up to 80 percent, has already been discovered in the new 2004/05 crop in more than 80 test farms in eight soyabean producing states in the world's No 2 soyabean producer and exporter.

"The program has 68 researchers training 1,000 crop experts throughout the country. Our main aim is to make producers aware of the problem," Jose Geraldo Baldini, the ministry's co-ordinator of plant protection, said in a statement.

Baldini said that the ministry had registered 19 products to protect soyabean plants from the disease which thrives in warm, wet conditions and caused a loss of some 4.5 million tonnes out of a crop of about 50 million tonnes in 2003/04.

The disease, which first hit Brazil in 2001, is occurring earlier and earlier in the production cycle and increasing the risk of crop losses.

The United States, which recorded its first cases of Asian soya rust disease in November, sent experts to view Brazilian control measures, Baldini added.

The Brazilian government hasn't forecast soyabean rust losses in 2004/05 (October-September), but said that the high cost of crop protection chemicals would cut producer profits. It estimated the financial loss in 2003/04 at some $2 billion.

The government and private sector have already invested $7 million in the creation of an anti-rust task force and further funds are due to allocated by the Science and Technology Ministry's 31 million reais ($11.7 million) agribusiness fund.

Copyright Reuters, 2005