USDA and Collaborators Crack Genetic Codes of Fungi That Threaten Wheat and Poplar

After six years of efforts of scientists from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and other research institutions, the genomes of two fungal pathogens that threaten wheat and poplar production have been sequenced.

The genetic codes of wheat stem rust pathogen (Puccinia graminis) and poplar leaf rust pathogen (Melampsora larici-populina) will be used by researchers to develop techniques that will address the problems caused by the fungi in wheat fields and poplar plantations. Wheat stem rust harms both wheat and barley production worldwide. Ug99 is the notorious strain of this fungus, which has reached Africa and Central Asia and has overcome several stem-rust-resistant wheat varieties produced over the last five decades. On the other hand, poplar leaf rust threatens the progress of poplar tress as a source of biomass for biofuel production in the U.S. and Europe.

"The threats these pathogens pose to two essential agricultural products are very real, and that makes it important to learn everything we can about them, from their molecular underpinnings to how they survive and spread infection," said Edward B. Knipling, administrator of Agricultural Research Service (ARS), USDA's principal intramural scientific research agency.

Read more information at http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2011/110509.htm.