Triple bottom-line consideration of sustainable plant disease management:From economic,sociological and ecological perspectives

Plant disease management plays an important role in achieving the sustainable development goals of the United Nations(UN)such as food security,human health,socio-economic improvement,resource conservation and ecological resilience.However,technologies available are often limited due to different interests between producers and society and lacks of proper understanding of economic thresholds and the complex interactions among ecology,productivity and profitability.A comprehensive synergy and conflict evaluation of economic,sociological and ecological effects with technologies,productions and evolutionary principles as main components should be used to guide sustainable disease management that aims to mitigate crop and economic losses in the short term while maintaining functional farm ecosystem in the long term.Consequently,there should be an increased emphasis on technology development,public education and information exchange among governments,researchers,producers and consumers to broaden the options for disease management in the future.

Genomic analysis,trajectory tracking,and field surveys reveal sources and long-distance dispersal routes of wheat stripe rust pathogen in China

Identifying sources of phytopathogen inoculum and determining their contributions to disease outbreaks are essential for predicting disease development and establishing control strategies.Puccinia striiformis f.sp.tritici(Pst),the causal agent of wheat stripe rust,is an airborne fungal pathogen with rapid virulence variation that threatens wheat production through its long-distance migration.Because of wide variation in geographic features,climatic conditions,and wheat production systems,Pst sources and related dispersal routes in China are largely unclear.In the present study,we performed genomic analyses of 154 Pst isolates from all major wheat-growing regions in China to determine Pst population structure and diversity.Through trajectory tracking,historical migration studies,genetic introgression analyses,and field surveys,we investigated Pst sources and their contributions to wheat stripe rust epidemics.We identified Longnan,the Himalayan region,and the Guizhou Plateau,which contain the highest population genetic diversities,as the Pst sources in China.Pst from Longnan disseminates mainly to eastern Liupan Mountain,the Sichuan Basin,and eastern Qinghai;that from the Himalayan region spreads mainly to the Sichuan Basin and eastern Qinghai;and that from the Guizhou Plateau migrates mainly to the Sichuan Basin and the Central Plain.These findings improve our current understanding of wheat stripe rust epidemics in China and emphasize the need for managing stripe rust on a national scale.

Global diversity and taxonomy of the Inonotus linteus complex(Hymenochaetales,Basidiomycota):Sanghuangporus gen.nov.,Tropicoporus excentrodendri and T.guanacastensis gen.et spp.nov.,and 17 new combinations

Although Inonotus linteus complex is placed in the genusInonotus,its perennial basidiocarps with a dimitic hyphal system,at least in the trama,distinguish the complex from other species in the genus,which have an annual habit and a monomitic hyphal system.The species number of Inonotus linteus complex has been increased in China and tropical America in recent publications.However,whether species in this complex belong to Inonotus has not specifically been addressed.To explore the phylogenetic placement of species of Inonotus linteus complex,we performed a comprehensive study using morphological and phylogenetic data based on global samples.nLSU(53 with 13 new)and ITS(70 with 18 new)datasets were used to produce the phylogenetic results.Taking into consideration the phylogenies inferred from the nLSU and ITS datasets,Inonotus is a polyphyletic genus comprising at least three clades.Clade A,the core Inonotus clade,contains the generic type,Inonotus hispidus,while Clades B and C comprise species from the Inonotus linteus complex.Morphological and phylogenetic evidence indicates that Clades B and C are new genera,and Sanghuangporus and Tropicoporus are introduced in this study.Ten species are transferred to Sanghuangporus and seven to Tropicoporus.Tropicoporus excentrodendri and T.guanacastensis spp.nov.are described,and their distinctive characters are discussed.Keys to the two new genera and the Inonotus sensu stricto,and to species of each new genus are provided.

Improving ITS sequence data for identification of plant pathogenic fungi

Plant pathogenic fungi are a large and diverse assemblage of eukaryotes with substantial impacts on natural ecosystems and human endeavours.These taxa often have complex and poorly understood life cycles,lack observable,discriminatory morphological characters,and may not be amenable to in vitro culturing.As a result,species identification is frequently difficult.Molecular(DNA sequence)data have emerged as crucial information for the taxonomic identification of plant pathogenic fungi,with the nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer(ITS)region being the most popular marker.However,international nucleotide sequence databases are accumulating numerous sequences of compromised or low-resolution taxonomic annotations and substandard technical quality,making their use in the molecular identification of plant pathogenic fungi problematic.Here we report on a concerted effort to identify high-quality reference sequences for various plant pathogenic fungi and to re-annotate incorrectly or insufficiently annotated public ITS sequences from these fungal lineages.A third objective was to enrich the sequences with geographical and ecological metadata.The results-a total of 31,954 changes-are incorporated in and made available through the UNITE database for molecular identification of fungi(http://unite.ut.ee),including standalone FASTA files of sequence data for local BLAST searches,use in the next-generation sequencing analysis platforms QIIME and mothur,and related applications.The present initiative is just a beginning to cover the wide spectrum of plant pathogenic fungi,and we invite all researchers with pertinent expertise to join the annotation effort.

FungalTraits:a user-friendly traits database of fungi and fungus-like stramenopiles

The cryptic lifestyle of most fungi necessitates molecular identification of the guild in environmental studies.Over the past decades,rapid development and affordability of molecular tools have tremendously improved insights of the fungal diversity in all ecosystems and habitats.Yet,in spite of the progress of molecular methods,knowledge about functional properties of the fungal taxa is vague and interpretation of environmental studies in an ecologically meaningful manner remains challenging.In order to facilitate functional assignments and ecological interpretation of environmental studies we introduce a user friendly traits and character database FungalTraits operating at genus and species hypothesis levels.Combining the information from previous efforts such as FUNGuild and FunFun together with involvement of expert knowledge,we reannotated 10,210 and 151 fungal and Stramenopila genera,respectively.This resulted in a stand-alone spreadsheet dataset covering 17 lifestyle related traits of fungal and Stramenopila genera,designed for rapid functional assignments of environmental stud-ies.In order to assign the trait states to fungal species hypotheses,the scientific community of experts manually categorised and assigned available trait information to 697,413 fungal ITS sequences.On the basis of those sequences we were able to summarise trait and host information into 92,623 fungal species hypotheses at 1%dissimilarity threshold.

Correction to:FungalTraits:a user friendly traits database of fungi and fungus-like stramenopiles

Correction to:Fungal Diversity(2020)105:116 https://doi.org/10.1007/s13225-020-00466-2 There were errors in the name of author LászlóG.Nagy and in affiliation no.31 in the original publication.The original article has been corrected.