One major threat to global food security that requires immediate attention, is the increasing incidence of host shift and host expansion in growing number of pathogenic fungi and emergence of new pathogens. The threat is more alarming because, yield quality and quantity improvement efforts are encouraging the cultivation of uniform plants with low genetic diversity that are increasingly susceptible to emerging pathogens. However, the influence of host genome differentiation on pathogen genome differentiation and its contribution to emergence and adaptability is still obscure. Here, we compared genome sequence of 6 isolates of Magnaporthe species obtained from three different host plants. We demonstrated the evolutionary relationship between Magnaporthe species and the influence of host differentiation on pathogens. Phylogenetic analysis showed that evolution of pathogen directly corresponds with host divergence, suggesting that host-pathogen interaction has led to co-evolution. Furthermore, we identified an asymmetric selection pressure on Magnaporthe species. Oryza sativa-infecting isolates showed higher directional selection from host and subsequently tends to lower the genetic diversity in its genome. We concluded that, frequent gene loss or gain, new transposon acquisition and sequence divergence are host adaptability mechanisms for Magnaporthe species and this coevolution processes is greatly driven by directional selection from host plants.

Magnaporthe oryzae 2539 was previously found to be avirulent to most rice cultivars and, therefore, was assumed to carry many avirulence (AVR) genes. However, only one AVR gene, AVR1-CO39, which corresponds to a resistance (R) gene Pi-CO39(t) in rice cv. CO39, has been found from 2539 thus far. In order to identify more AVR genes, we isolated 228 progeny strains from a cross between 2539 and Guy11, an M. oryzae strain with strong virulence on rice, and inoculated these strains onto 23 rice accessions (22 individual cultivars and a mixture of 14 cultivars) that are all resistant to 2539 but susceptible to Guy11. Unexpectedly, the experimental results indicated that the avirulence of 2539 on these rice cultivars appeared to be controlled only by the AVR1-CO39 locus. Consistent with this result, we further found that all except one of the rice cultivars were resistant to two transformed Guy11 strains carrying a 1.05-kb fragment containing the AVR1-CO39 gene from 2539. These results suggest that AVR1-CO39 is a predominant locus controlling the broad avirulence of 2539 on cultivated rice. Based on the results of this study and other previous studies, we infer that AVR1-CO39 is a species-wise rather than a cultivar-wise host-specific AVR locus of M. oryzae for rice.

Tea gray blight is one of the most serious foliar diseases of tea tree, caused by the plant-pathogenic fungus Pseudopestalotiopsis theae, which can affect production and quality of tea worldwide. We generated a highly contiguous, 50.41-Mbp genome assembly (N₅₀ = 1.30 Mbp) of P. theae strain CYF27 by combining PacBio long-read and Illumina short-read sequencing technologies. We identified a total of 15,626 gene models, of which 1,038 genes encode putative secreted proteins. The high-quality genome assembly and annotation resource reported here will be useful for the study of fungal infection mechanisms and pathogen–host interaction.

Olive leaf scab, also known as peacock spot disease, caused by Venturia oleaginea (syn. Spilocaea oleaginea and Fusicladium oleagineum) is the most widespread and economically important fungal disease attacking olive in production countries. Here, we report the first highly contiguous whole-genome sequence (46.08 Mb) of one isolate, YUN35, of V. oleaginea. The described genome sequence and annotation resource will be useful to study the fungal biology, pathogen-host interaction, characterization of genes of interest, and population genetic diversity.

Plant diseases can be classified according to pathogenic organisms, and 70–80% of them are fungal diseases