In the January issue of Plant Disease, Mirik and colleagues optimize Landsat satellite data to accurately estimate epidemics of wheat streak mosaic disease based on foliage reflectance. The detection of moderate to severe outbreaks of the virus can help growers make decisions about costly irrigation and pest control inputs, especially important in the Texas panhandle where the availability of irrigation water is becoming limiting. This special report is an excellent overview of the benefits of remote sensing. Read more... 
 

MPMI Editor's Pick by

Dr. Gary Stacey, Editor-in-Chief 

An important role for plant cell wall degrading enzymes has been postulated in a variety of plant-microbe interactions. However, high gene redundancy for these functions in pathogens has hindered efforts to show a direct connection between enzyme production and virulence. In the January issue of MPMI, Tzima et al. approach this problem by disrupting the VdSNF1 gene in Verticillium dahliae. The product of this gene regulates catabolite repression of cell wall degrading enzyme production. The mutants generated showed significant loss in plant pathogenicity. Read more... 

 

Phytopathology Editor's Pick by
Dr. Niklaus Grunwald, Editor-in-Chief  

Soil fungal communities affect plant disease, but this is easier said than demonstrated. Sudini et al. use ribosomal intergenic spacer analysis (RISA) analysis to assess soil fungal community structure and PCR-based detection of the pathogen Aspergillus flavus. A. flavus is an aflatoxin producing pathogen problematic in peanut production. Results indicated 75% similarities among fungal communities from the same cropping regime. Interestingly, detection using PCR-based methods with A. flavus-specific primers could not detect these fungi even at a concentration of 10ˆ3 CFU per g soil. Read more...