Wheat blast occurred in Bangladesh for the first time in Asia in 2016. It is caused by a fungal pathogen, Magnaporthe oryzae Triticum (MoT) pathotype. In this review, we focused on the current status of the wheat blast in regard to host, pathogen, and environment. Despite the many efforts to control the disease, it expanded to neighboring regions including India, the world's second largest wheat producer. However, the disease occurrence has definitely decreased in quantity, because of many farmers chose to grow alternate crops according to the government's directions. Bangladesh government planned to introduce blast resistant cultivars but knowledges about genetics of resistance is limited. The genome analyses of the pathogen population revealed that the isolates caused wheat blast in Bangladesh are genetically close to a South American lineage of Magnaporthe oryzae. Understanding the genomes of virulent strains would be important to find target resistance genes for wheat breeding. Although the drier winter weather in Bangladesh was not favorable for development of wheat blast before, recent global warming and climate change are posing an increasing risk of disease development. Bangladesh outbreak in 2016 was likely to be facilitated by an extraordinary warm and humid weather in the affected districts before the harvest season. Coordinated international collaboration and steady financial supports are needed to mitigate the fearsome wheat blast in South Asia before it becomes a catastrophe.

Wheat Blast: A New Fungal Inhabitant to Bangladesh Threatening World Wheat Production disease control;Magnaporthe oryzae;Pyricularia graminis-tritici;Pyricularia oryzae;wheat blast outbreak; World wheat production is now under threat due to the wheat blast outbreak in Bangladesh in early March 2016. This is a new disease in this area, indicating the higher possibility of this pathogen spreading throughout the Asia, the world's largest wheat producing area. Occurrence of this disease caused ~3.5% reduction of the total wheat fields in Bangladesh. Its economic effect on the Bangladesh wheat market was little because wheat contributes to 3% of total cereal consumption, among which ~70% have been imported from other countries. However, as a long-term perspective, much greater losses will occur once this disease spreads to other major wheat producing areas of Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan due to the existing favorable condition for the blast pathogen. The wheat blast pathogen belongs to the Magnaporthe oryzae species complex causing blast disease on multiple hosts in the Poaceae family. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that the Bangladesh outbreak strains and the Brazil outbreak strains were the same phylogenetic lineage, suggesting that they might be migrated from Brazil to Bangladesh during the seed import. To protect wheat production of Bangladesh and its neighbors, several measures including rigorous testing of seed health, use of chemicals, crop rotation, reinforcement of quarantine procedures, and increased field monitoring should be implemented. Development of blast resistant wheat varieties should be a long-term solution and combination of different methods with partial resistant lines may suppress this disease for some time.

Brown leaf spot disease caused by Alternaria spp. is among the most common diseases of potato crops. Typical brown spot symptoms were observed in commercial potato-cultivation areas of northern Korea from June to August 2020–2021. In total, 68 isolates were collected, and based on sequence analysis of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region, the collected isolates were identified as Alternaria spp. (80.9%). Phylogenetic analysis revealed that a majority of these isolates clustered within a clade that included A. alternata. Additionally, the ITS region and rpb2 yielded the most informative sequences for the identification of A. alternata. Pathogenicity tests confirmed that the collected pathogens elicited symptoms identical to those observed in the field. In pathogenicity tests performed on seven commercial cultivars, the pathogens exhibited strong virulence in both wound and non-wound inoculations. Among the cultivars tested, Arirang-1ho, Arirang-2ho, and Golden Ball were resistant to the pathogens. Furthermore, among the fungicides tested in vitro, mancozeb and difenoconazole were found to be effective for inhibiting mycelial growth. In summary, our findings suggest that A. alternata plays a critical role in leaf disease in potato-growing regions and emphasise the necessity of continuous monitoring and management to protect against this disease in Korea.

As international food trade increases, consumers are becoming increasingly interested in food safety and authenticity, which are linked to geographical origin. Adzuki beans (Vigna angularis) are cultivated worldwide, but there are no tools for accurately discriminating their geographical origin. Thus, our study aims to develop a method for discriminating the geographical origin of adzuki beans through targeted and non-targeted metabolite profiling with gas chromatography time-of-flight mass spectrometry combined with multivariate analysis. Orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis showed clear discrimination between adzuki beans cultivated in Korea and China. Non-targeted metabolite profiling showed better separation than targeted profiling. Furthermore, citric acid and malic acid were the most notable metabolites for discriminating adzuki beans cultivated in Korea and China. The geographical discrimination method combining non-targeted metabolite profiling and pareto-scaling showed excellent predictability (Q² = 0.812). Therefore, it is a suitable prediction tool for the discrimination of geographical origin and is expected to be applicable to the geographical authentication of adzuki beans.

Trametes pubescens, white rot fungus, has been used for folk medicine in Asian countries to treat ailments such as cancer and gastrointestinal diseases. This study was initiated to evaluate the in vitro antioxidant, anti-diabetes, anti-dementia, and anti-inflammatory activities of T. pubescens fruiting bodies. The 1,1-diphenyl-2-picryl-hydrazyl (DPPH) free radical scavenging activities of T. pubescens methanol (ME) and hot water (HWE) extracts (2.0 mg/mL) were comparable to butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), the positive control. However, the chelating effects of ME and HWE were significantly higher than that of BHT. The HWE (6 mg/mL) also showed comparable reducing power to BHT. Eleven phenol compounds were detected by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis. The α-amylase and α-glucosidase inhibitory activities of the ME and HWE of the mushroom were lower than Acarbose, the standard reference; however, the inhibitory effects of the mushroom extracts at 2.0 mg/mL were moderate. The acetylcholinesterase (AChE) and butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) inhibitory effects of ME and HWE were moderate and comparable with galanthamine, the standard drug to treat early stages of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The ME had a neuroprotective effect against glutamate-induced PC-12 cell cytotoxicity at the concentration range of 2–40 μg/mL. The mushroom extracts also showed inflammation inhibitory activities such as production of nitric oxide (NO) and expression of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) in lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced murine macrophage-like cell lines (RAW 264.7) and significantly suppressed the carrageenan-induced rat paw-edema. Therefore, fruiting body extracts of T. pubescens demonstrated antioxidant related anti-diabetes, anti-dementia and anti-inflammatory activities.

In the course of screening for microbes with antifungal activity, we found that the culture filtrate of the IUM00035 isolate exhibited strong antifungal activity against Magnaporthe oryzae and Colletotrichum coccodes in planta. Based on the phylogenetic analysis with the ITS region, the IUM00035 isolate was identified as Crinipellis rhizomaticola. To identify antifungal compounds from the C. rhizomaticola IUM00035 isolate, the culture filtrate of the isolate was partitioned with ethyl acetate and n-butanol and, consequently, two active compounds were isolated from the ethyl acetate extract. The chemical structures of the isolated compounds were determined as crinipellin A (1) and a new crinipellin derivative, crinipellin I (2), by NMR spectral analyses and a comparison of their NMR and MS data with those reported in the literature. Crinipellin A (1) exhibited a wide range of antifungal activity in vitro against C. coccodes, M. oryzae, Botrytis cinerea, and Phytophthora infestans (MICs = 1, 8, 31, and 31 µg/mL, respectively). Furthermore, when plants were treated with crinipellin A (1) (500 µg/mL) prior to inoculation with fungal pathogens, crinipellin A (1) exhibited disease control values of 88%, 65%, and 60% compared with non-treatment control against tomato late blight, pepper anthracnose, and wheat leaf rust, respectively. In contrast to crinipellin A (1), crinipellin I (2) showed weak or no activity (MICs > 250 µg/mL). Taken together, our results show that the C. rhizomaticola IUM00035 isolate suppresses the development of plant fungal diseases, in part through the production of crinipellin A (1).