Location: Cereal Crops Improvement Research
2024 Annual Report
Accomplishments
1. Using machine learning to characterize plant-fungal interactions. Laser confocal microscopy has become an essential technique in thoroughly evaluating-plant microbe interactions. However, this work has been somewhat limited to organisms that are amenable to transformation and reliable expression of fluorescent proteins. In previous work, we identified stains that strongly differentiated fungal tissue from plant tissue as well as highlighting the nuclei of healthy cells. ARS researchers in Fargo, North Dakota, used machine learning to generate volume measurements of both fungal hyphae and plant nuclei. Fungal volume was used to track the increase in fungal biomass between timepoints as well as compare fungal biomass between strains of pathogens with and without specific virulence genes. Additionally, since nuclear breakdown is one of the early signs of programmed cell death, cell death could be accurately tracked by nuclear volume to show precisely when cell death was taking place. This machine learning pipeline can be used in most plant-fungal interactions to evaluate pathogen fitness and the timing of plant cell death.
2. A Moroccan population of P. teres f. teres overcomes a commonly used source of barley resistance. Net form net blotch (NFNB) is one of the most destructive fungal pathogens of barley globally, with typical losses ranging from 10-40% without the use of fungicides or resistant cultivars. Some barley lines harbor a highly effective resistance to the causal pathogen P. teres f. teres and this resistance source referred to as Rpt5 is commonly used in breeding programs to guard against NFNB. ARS researchers in Fargo, North Dakota, assembled and evaluated a global population of P. teres f. teres on a barley mapping population segregating for the Rpt5 resistance gene. A subset of a Moroccan collection were the only isolates to overcome the Rpt5 resistance, indicating that Rpt5 is vulnerable globally. This information is critical to breeders using the Rpt5 resistance in cultivar development.
Review Publications
Taliadoros, D., Feurtey, A., Wyatt, N.A., Gladieux, P., Friesen, T.L., Stukenbrock, E. 2024. Population genomic analyses and demography inference show recent emergence and dispersal of barley pathogen coinciding with crop domestication and cultivation history. PLoS Genetics. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1010884.
Kariyawasam, G., Nelson, A., Williams, S., Solomon, P., Faris, J.D., Friesen, T.L. 2023. The necrotrophic pathogen Parastagonospora nodorum is a master manipulator of wheat defense. Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions. https://doi.org/10.1094/MPMI-05-23-0067-IRW.
Fiedler, J.D., Friesen, T.L., Rouse, M.N., Jin, Y., Green, A.J., Mergoum, M., Frohberg, R., Underdahl, J., Walz, A., Seiland, T. 2023. Registration of “ND Frohberg” hard red spring wheat. Journal of Plant Registrations. 17:385-396. https://doi.org/10.1002/plr2.20291.
Li, J., Wyatt, N.A., Skiba, R., Kariyawasan, G., Richards, J., Effertz, K., Rehman, S., Brueggemann, R., Friesen, T.L. 2024. Variability in chromosome 1 of select Moroccan P. teres f. teres isolates enables isolates to overcome a highly effective barley chromosome 6H source of resistance. Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions. https://doi.org/10.1094/MPMI-10-23-0159-R.