Two Chinese nationals have been charged by the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in what officials have described as a “national security threat” involving a potential act of agroterrorism. The Chinese individuals, Yunqing Jian, 33, and Zunyong Liu, 34, allegedly conspired to smuggle a dangerous agricultural fungus, ‘Fusarium graminearum’, into the United States. The fungus is known to cause head blight, a destructive disease affecting wheat, barley, maize, and rice.
The U.S. Department of Justice stated that the two people face charges of conspiracy, smuggling, making false statements, and visa fraud. During the investigation, authorities discovered that Jian is a member of the Chinese Communist Party. Officials warned that the smuggled pathogen had the potential to be used as an agroterrorism weapon, given its capacity to severely disrupt food production. The fungus is responsible for losses amounting to billions of dollars every year.
The Case
Jian, a researcher affiliated with a U.S. university, was allegedly coordinating with Liu, who travelled to the United States in July 2024 with samples of the fungus hidden in his luggage. Their electronic communications revealed plans to study the pathogen outside of proper regulatory frameworks, raising concerns that the fungus could be used as a biological weapon to disrupt America’s agricultural supply chain.
Authorities found a scientific article on Liu’s phone titled “Plant-Pathogen Warfare under Changing Climate Conditions”, suggesting a potential interest in the use of plant pathogens as weapons. A week before Liu’s arrival in the U.S., he exchanged messages with Jian. Jian remarked, “It’s a pity that I still have to work for you,” to which Liu responded, “Once this is done, everything else will be easy.”
Messages between the two in 2024 suggest that Jian was already cultivating Fusarium graminearum in the University of Michigan lab prior to Liu’s interception at Detroit airport. Notably, the university lacked the necessary federal permits to handle this pathogen.
In February, FBI agents questioned Jian at the campus lab. When asked if she had assisted Liu with the pathogen, she responded, “100% no.” However, a signed statement expressing her support for the Communist Party of China was found on her phone.
The U.S. does not have an extradition treaty with China, making Liu’s arrest unlikely unless he returns to U.S. jurisdiction.
India’s Brush with Agroterrorism
India’s own encounter with agroterrorism came quietly in 2016, without the drama of criminal prosecutions or international headlines. A research paper published by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) later disclosed that Magnaporthe oryzae Triticum fungus (MoT) was found in Murshidabad and Nadia districts of West Bengal, regions that lie close to the porous border with Bangladesh.
Just a year earlier, in 2015, Bangladesh and Pakistan both had experienced a severe wheat blast outbreak that devastated crops across several districts. Given the proximity and the identical strain, Indian authorities suspected cross-border spread. However, researchers floated a more sinister theory, which indicated that MoT might have been deliberately introduced into Indian territory as an act of agroterrorism.
Although concrete evidence was lacking, the response was swift and revealing. The Indian government banned wheat cultivation in the affected districts for three years, effectively locking down the fungus’s local transmission cycle. India also imposed a 5-kilometre no-cultivation zone along the International Border in neighbouring districts. It swiftly launched enhanced surveillance and agricultural testing protocols in eastern India.
The strategy worked. The outbreak was contained before it could escalate into a national crisis. But the incident underscored just how vulnerable India’s agroecosystem is to bio-threats, whether accidental or deliberate. The involvement of DRDO in tracking and analysing the outbreak highlighted the defence establishment’s awareness of the security implications.
Was It Agroterrorism?
The DRDO paper hinted at a deliberate act, though it stopped short of accusing any actor directly. Given the geopolitical tensions in the region, particularly with Pakistan and to a lesser extent with transnational extremist networks operating along the border, the theory is not far-fetched.
Agroterrorism, a subcategory of bioterrorism, targets crops and livestock to cause economic disruption, food insecurity, and social unrest. It’s cheaper, harder to trace, and potentially just as destabilising as more conventional forms of terrorism.
In India’s case, the lack of forensic traceability, combined with the regional spread of MoT and its detection in isolated districts, fed suspicions that the fungus may have been introduced deliberately, possibly piggybacking on informal seed trade or cross-border smuggling routes.
Pakistan’s 2015 Cotton Leaf Curl Virus Outbreak
Just a year ago, Pakistan was grappling with its own agro-crisis. In 2015, cotton crops in southern Punjab were ravaged by an unusually virulent strain of the cotton leaf curl virus (CLCuV). Whiteflies, which are the vectors of this virus, exploded in number, leading to the destruction of almost two-thirds of the cotton crop in the region.
The economic fallout was devastating, with estimated losses ranging from USD 630–670 million. Cotton production, a backbone of Pakistan’s textile industry, plummeted.
What made the outbreak, a year later in India, particularly suspicious was the genetic makeup of the pathogen. According to the DRDO paper, the pathogen sequences were previously unknown in India, but were detected in experimental cotton plants at two research institutes in Vehari and Multan, both located in Pakistan’s Punjab.
This raised eyebrows. Could the experimental strains have accidentally—or intentionally—entered commercial fields? Was there a security lapse at the research facilities? Or worse, was this an act of self-inflicted agroterrorism that backfired? The answers remain elusive, but the case showed how easily a single pathogen, poorly contained, could collapse an entire agricultural sub-sector.
Not the 1st Time for the US Either
In late 2022 and early 2023, public health officials in Reedley, California, began investigating a building suspected of operating without a valid business license. The property belonged to a Chinese-linked company called “Prestige Biotech,” which claimed to be a diagnostics firm. What they found was anything but routine.
Upon inspection, the facility was discovered to be running a covert laboratory. Freezers and refrigerators were packed with thousands of vials, many improperly labelled, some with handwritten Chinese characters. These vials contained biological material including HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, COVID-19, and chlamydia. More disturbingly, investigators found live mice genetically engineered to carry disease, raising serious bioethical and security red flags.
But among the most overlooked aspects of the case was the detection of Magnaporthe oryzae pathotype Triticum (MoT), a fungus responsible for the devastating wheat blast disease.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were called in. Despite extensive investigations, the exact origin and intended use of the pathogens remain unclear. Prestige Biotech had connections to defunct companies with Chinese ownership, leading to speculations about state-sponsored biological espionage, though no direct evidence has been confirmed.
Why These Incidents Matter? Agroterrorism as a 21st Century Threat
What links the Reedley fungus case, the West Bengal wheat blast, and the Punjab cotton virus outbreak is not just the biological agent, but the ambiguity surrounding its origin and the enormous cost of containment.
Governments worldwide are realising that food and agriculture are more than economic or social issues; they are national security concerns. With climate change expanding the range of pathogens, globalised trade accelerating movement, and geopolitics injecting new hostilities, the agricultural sector is becoming an attractive soft target.
In the Indian context, the implications are even more serious because India has the world’s largest population dependent on agriculture. India’s borders are also porous, especially with Bangladesh, Myanmar, China, and Pakistan. Three of these countries are now openly hostile to India.
There is growing evidence of non-state actors experimenting with non-conventional sabotage, including crop disease proliferation. India has taken important steps to address agroterrorism threats through institutions like the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), and the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR).
These bodies have contributed to early detection, research, and emergency containment. But the country still lacks a unified, centralised agro-biosecurity framework capable of rapid nationwide coordination. Stronger border surveillance of agricultural inputs and seeds is essential, particularly in regions adjoining hostile neighbours. Additionally, India must invest in routine agroforensics capabilities to trace the origin and spread of pathogens with precision, enabling quicker response and accountability.
China Repeated Offender?
This isn’t the first time China has faced accusations of bioterrorism or using biological agents as tools of influence or disruption. Over the years, several governments, intelligence communities, and independent researchers have raised concerns about China’s opaque bio-research practices, dual-use laboratories, and poor transparency in outbreak investigations. From suspicions surrounding the origins of COVID-19 to reports of unauthorised genetic editing experiments and the mishandling of dangerous pathogens, the country has been under periodic global scrutiny. The recent case only adds to this growing unease, suggesting a wider pattern that goes beyond isolated incidents.
The Silent Battlefield
The battlefields of the future may not always be visible. With cyberterrorism, ecoterrorism, and more such unconventional wars coming to head, the battlefields of the future could lie in wheat fields outside Murshidabad, cotton farms in Punjab, smuggled through scholars, or even anonymous warehouses in California. The agents of disruption, fungi, viruses, insects, are easy to miss, but their impact can spiral into national crises.
India’s successful containment of MoT in 2016 was a quiet victory. But it also served as a warning: the tools of agroterrorism are already in circulation. Whether driven by malice, neglect, or experimentation gone wrong, these biological threats are here, and their implications are far from agricultural alone.
