Phytophthora ramorum is the causal agent of Sudden Oak Death (SOD), which is an economically and environmentally important disease causing up to 80% mortality of tanoaks in Pacific Northwest coastal forests (LeBoldus et al., 2022). There are currently four clonal lineages in the United States and Europe, named North America...
Oomycete and fungal pathogens threaten food, fiber, and forests around the world. With climate change, these pathogens are expected to emerge more frequently. Evolution can facilitate their emergence through mechanisms such as mutations that change or expand host range. Characterizing evolutionary mechanisms in plant pathogens will contribute to our ability...
Oomycetes are an important group of organisms with a variety of ecological roles similar to fungi. Although many are well-studied plant pathogens known for their devastating effects on agricultural systems, most are little-studied saprobes and parasites of plants and animals in nearly every ecosystem on earth. The advent of affordable...
Plant pathogens in the genus Phytophthora are known to cause disease on field crops, nursery plants, and forest trees. The best known example probably is Phytophthora infestans, which triggered the infamous Irish potato famine. Other important Phytophthora species include: P. ramorum (sudden oak death pathogen), P. sojae (soybean root rot...
Modern plant pathology benefits from integrating methods and concepts from evolutionary biology. For example, evolutionary concepts are used to identify and examine species boundaries of plant pathogens, recognize processes underlying pathogen biogeography, identify traits that characterize emerging species, and discover new molecular interactions that originate under processes of selection. In...
Research on the population genetics of microbial organisms requires the use of specialized analyses designed for clonal organisms to avoid violating the assumptions of traditional population genetic models. The tools necessary for performing these analyses existed as a set of unrelated software with non-overlapping capabilities and did not cover all...
Western Oregon is home to native Rhododendron species and is the center for cultivated
Rhododendron production in the United States. These Rhododendron spp. are known to
be infected with fungal endophytes. However, the community structure of these
endophytes in native and cultivated Rhododendron is poorly understood. Our study
targeted the...
Rhododendron species are host to many Phytophthora species and are an important crop in the nursery industry. The foliar epidemiology of twelve Phytophthora diseases on Rhododendron was studied in field and growth chamber experiments on two Rhododendron cultivars. The relative aggressiveness of Phytophthora spp. was assessed using disease incidence, severity,...
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Niklaus J Grünwald
Rhododendron species are host to many Phytophthora species and are