Newly emerged wheat blast disease is a serious threat to global wheat production. Wheat
blast is caused by a distinct, exceptionally diverse lineage of the fungus causing rice blast …

Magnaporthe oryzae is the causal agent of rice blast disease, a devastating problem
worldwide. This fungus has caused breakdown of resistance conferred by newly developed …

Wheat, one of the most important food crops, is threatened by a blast disease pandemic.
Here, we show that a clonal lineage of the wheat blast fungus recently spread to Asia and …

Fungal plant pathogens rapidly evolve virulence on resistant hosts through mutations in
genes encoding proteins that modulate the host immune responses. The mutational …

Supernumerary mini-chromosomes–a unique type of genomic structural variation–have
been implicated in the emergence of virulence traits in plant pathogenic fungi. However, the …

Chromosomal rearrangements are a major driver of eukaryotic genome evolution, affecting
speciation, pathogenicity and cancer progression. Changes in chromosome structure are …

Wheat blast first emerged in Brazil in the mid-1980s and has recently caused heavy crop
losses in Asia. Here we show how this devastating pathogen evolved in Brazil. Genetic …

Background Understanding the mechanisms and timescales of plant pathogen outbreaks
requires a detailed genome-scale analysis of their population history. The fungus …

Fungal pathogens can rapidly evolve virulence towards resistant crops in agricultural
ecosystems. Gains in virulence are often mediated by the mutation or deletion of a gene …

The plant-pathogenic fungus Mycosphaerella graminicola (asexual stage: Septoria tritici)
causes septoria tritici blotch, a disease that greatly reduces the yield and quality of wheat …