Grapevine species (Vitis sp.) are prone to several diseases, fungi being the major pathogens compromising its cultivation and economic profit around the world. Knowledge of the complexity of mechanisms responsible for resistance to fungus infection of cultivars, such as Regent, is necessary for strategies to be defined which will improve resistance in highly susceptible crop species. Transcript...

This number of Mycological Research News features: In this issue; Fungi associated with insects or used for applied biocontrol ; Powdery mildews as invasive plant pathogens: new epidemics caused by two North American species in Europe; and Genetic differences among nuclei in arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. This theme issue on fungi associated with insects includes ten papers on this topic. These ...

The Rar1 gene, identified in the context of race-specific powdery mildew resistance mediated by the Hordeum vulgare (barley) resistance (R) gene Mla12, is required for the function of many R-mediated defense responses in mono- and dicotyledonous plant species. Mla resistance is associated with an oxidative burst and a subsequent cell death reaction of attacked cells. Rar1 mutants are impaired i...

The outwardly directed cell wall and associated plasma membrane of epidermal cells represent the first layers of plant defense against intruding pathogens. Cell wall modifications and the formation of defense structures at sites of attempted pathogen penetration are decisive for plant defense. A precise isolation of these stress-induced structures would allow a specific analysis of regulatory m...

Powdery mildews, obligate biotrophic fungal parasites on a wide range of important crops, can be controlled by plant resistance (R) genes, but these are rapidly overcome by parasite mutants evading recognition. It is unknown how this rapid evolution occurs without apparent loss of parasite fitness. R proteins recognize avirulence (AVR) molecules from parasites in a gene-for-gene manner and trig...

The adoption of modern rice cultivars has increased annual production in the past three decades by 2.4% per annum and average yield by 71% (Khush and Virk 2002). Modern cultivars continue to replace thousands of traditional cultivars (Chang 1994). Although the number of landraces used in breeding modern cultivars has increased in the same period (Hossain et al 2003), many modern cultivars share...

Specific syntaxins, such as Arabidopsis AtPEN1 and its barley ortholog ROR2, play a major role in plant defense against powdery mildews. Indeed, the impairment of these genes results in increased fungal penetration in both host and non-host interactions. In this study, a genome-wide survey allowed the identification of 21 tomato syntaxins. Two of them, named SlPEN1a and SlPEN1b, are closely rel...