Every year, millions of people around the world get sick from invasive fungal infections. Treating them can sometimes take months, or even years. The problem is that fungi are versatile organisms that can adapt quickly to our medications. This is made even worse by the fact that the same medications are indispensable for farmers.

But humans can also be quick to adapt! And experts are coming up with possible solutions:

?Moving away from monocultures:
A lot of the time, crops are made up of the same species, with the exact same DNA. If a fungus manages to break the immune defenses of a single plant, it will easily be able to infect the entire field. But, if you have different species of plants, the fungus has to work a lot harder to move from one plant to the next. This could help farmers rely on fungicides less.

? Medication cocktails:
A farmer in Germany has been treating her crops with a selected mix of chemicals that work together to kill the fungus. This is especially useful if the fungus is resistant to one or more of the medications in the cocktail. In Valencia, Spain, a similar strategy helped contain the spread of an aggressive fungal infection in a hospital.

?DNA testing:
The sooner doctors know the exact species infecting a patient, the quicker they can react and prevent the fungus from spreading.

What do you think of these solutions? Let us know in the comments!
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