Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research's video: The other pandemic: Unlocking the Austropuccinia psidii genome to help fight myrtle rust

Environmental plant pathogens pose major challenges for containment efforts. Austropuccinia psidii is a plant fungal pathogen causing the disease myrtle rust on plants in the Myrtaceae family. Originating in Brazil, it was first found in Australia in 2010 and in New Zealand in 2017. The lineage spreading most rapidly is known as the pandemic biotype. There is very little known about how the fungus overcomes plant defence mechanisms and infects a huge range of hosts, so we are in a race against time. Working closely together, researchers from Australia and New Zealand have assembled the genome for the pandemic biotype. Their efforts show it is massively expanded with transposable elements (synonymous with ‘jumping genes’), making it the largest assembled fungal genome to date. This webinar is presented by Peri Tobias (University of Sydney), the lead author of the soon-to-be-released paper detailing features of the genome, and some of the downstream applications that are now being developed to help manage the spread of myrtle rust.