1. Strategies for combating Fusarium wilt and Sclerotinia stem rot: two destructive fungal diseases of break crops & 2. Building the base: widening the genetic & adaptive diversity of chickpea.
Date
Tuesday 2 May 2017
Time
12:30-13:30 (AEST)
Venue
CSIRO: Black Mountain – Discovery Theatre, St Lucia QBP – Level 3 South telepresence room (3.323), Floreat – B1b Boardroom, Waite – B101-FG-R00-BoardWICWest
Speakers
Louise Thatcher, Research Scientist & Team Leader, CSIRO Agriculture & Food
Jens Berger, Research Scientist and Team Leader, CSIRO Agriculture & Food
Synopsis
Strategies for combating Fusarium wilt and Sclerotinia stem rot: two destructive fungal diseases of break crops. Necrotrophic fungal pathogens cause billions of dollars of losses to grain and oilseed crops annually, with some of these, such as Fusarium wilt disease of legumes, being significant biosecurity threats to Australian cropping. Our team works on pathogens of this class that cause disease on break crops such as chickpea or canola, where we apply genomic, transcriptomic and bioinformatic tools to unravel the plant-pathogen interaction and to explore the use of beneficial biocontrol microbes. Combined, this research works towards reducing crop losses to necrotrophic fungal pathogens by improving host disease resistance and providing new disease management options. An overview of aspects of this work will be presented.
Building the base: widening the genetic & adaptive diversity of chickpea. Chickpea has a narrow genetic base: adaptive traits for biotic and abiotic stresses are hard to find, making further improvement difficult. The annual wild relatives have long been recognized as a potential gold mine for improvement, harbouring a useful resistance to a range of stresses, but were themselves constrained by extremely limited collection. Cicer reticulatum, the wild progenitor of chickpea, and its close relative C. echinospermum (both crossable with chickpea), were only represented by 18 and 10 original accessions in the entire world collection. Further collection was difficult because these species reside in SE Anatolia, the site of a long standing conflict between the Turkish government and a Kurdish guerrilla movement. In 2013, coinciding with a fragile peace accord that lasted 2 years, GRDC funded 3 missions covering much of SE Anatolia that have reversed this collection deficit. These collections have considerably widened the annual wild Cicer habitat range, sampling a range of locations, altitudes, climates and soil types throughout SE Anatolia, in areas which are once again inaccessible due to the resumption of earlier conflicts. Germplasm collected in 2013 has been lodged in the AARI Genebank (Izmir, Turkey) and is now also accessioned in the international genebank network including the AGG & USDA, where it is driving a range of phenotyping (water deficit response, low pH, cold & heat tolerance, phenology, nematode, Ascochyta, leaf miner) and domestic introgression projects in Australia, Turkey, USA, Canada, India & Ethiopia. The work has only just begun, but offers an exciting opportunity to test our original contention: that chickpea is constrained by a narrow base. Now that we have widened this base, what does the future hold for chickpea improvement?
Biography
Louise Thatcher: is a Research Scientist at CSIRO Agriculture and Food within the Molecular Plant Pathology and Crop Genomics (MPPCG) group in Floreat, Perth. Before joining the MPPCG in 2011, Louise was an OCE Postdoctoral Fellow at CSIRO Plant Industry in Brisbane and completed a BSc and PhD from the University of Western Australia. Her research focuses on the improvement of disease resistance in cereals and break crops (legumes and canola) to devastating Fusarium or Sclerotinia fungal pathogens. This involves the application of molecular, bioinformatic and “omics-based” approaches to unravel pathogen virulence and mechanisms underlying host resistance or susceptibility. More recently, she is applying this knowledge to and harnessing the power of biologicals to suppress these pathogens. Combined, this research works towards reducing crop losses to necrotrophic fungal pathogens by improving host disease resistance and providing new disease management options.
Jens Berger:
This is a public seminar.
NO visitor pass is required for non-CSIRO attendees going to Discovery Lecture Theatre