Plant Pathogens and Fungal Diseases

Fungi that infect plants range from devastating crop pathogens to endophytes that live silently inside healthy tissue, sometimes for years before switching to a harmful mode, and understanding this spectrum requires tracing both evolutionary relationships and the molecular machinery that governs how a fungus recognizes and colonizes a particular host. Phylogenetic analysis combined with genomic characterization has sharpened species boundaries that were historically blurred by superficial morphology, revealing far more diversity than classical taxonomy acknowledged. A central open question is what determines host specificity — why one fungal lineage causes disease only in a narrow range of plants while a close relative attacks dozens — and answering it demands integrating population genomics, comparative effector biology, and experimental infection assays. Equally pressing is understanding what tips an endophyte from dormant symbiont to active pathogen, a transition with direct consequences for predicting disease outbreaks under changing climates.

Works

252,809

Total citations

2,271,023

Keywords

Fungal PathogensEndophytic FungiPhylogenetic AnalysisGenomic CharacterizationPlant PathogenesisSpecies Recognition