By now, you’ve likely heard of the devastating fungal pathogen threatening wheat production in southeastern Bangladesh. In just 3 short years, the causal agent of this devastating pathogen – the Triticum pathotype of Magnaporthe oryzae (Mot) – has now been confirmed in South Asia. First identified in South America (Brazil; 1985), scientists have kept a close eye on the movement and virulence of Mot, anticipating its eventual spread to wheat producing regions around the globe. Indeed, in 2012, research groups from Kansas State University and North Carolina State University released data calculating the probability of movement of Mot from South America to the United States. Additionally, early work in the U.S. has focused on genotyping pathogen isolates, with the goal of understanding origins and potential mechanisms of virulence – and host resistance – to prepare for the inevitable.
For Bangladesh, the inevitable is history, and wheat growers are now battling potentially the worst agricultural epidemics in recent history. IS-MPMI member Barbara Valent is a member of one of many international teams working to understand the movement and virulence of Mot. Recently quoted in a USDA
news release, Barbara noted that U.S. and Bangladeshi scientists are working together to develop short-term management strategies to identify and define the origin of the strain to better understand the potential for additional movement and yield loss.
Across the Atlantic in Switzerland and the United Kingdom, parallel efforts are underway to use an unprecedented “crowd sourcing” approach to develop research and resource-building efforts through “pathogenomics,” aimed at identifying and genotyping isolate(s) responsible of the first report of this pathogen in Asia. In the UK,
research in the area of genomics is being led by a group of IS-MPMI members, while much of the
effort in Switzerland is led by Daniel Croll, a professor at ETH Zurich. While Mot has been observed in the U.S. (2011), it is unclear how this pathogen has moved to Asia, and using genome-based technologies, coupled with an unrestricted crowd-sourcing-based approach to generate resources, IS-MPMI members are part of the teams that are leading a global effort to serve society and disseminate knowledge.
