Location: Foreign Disease-Weed Science Research
Project Number: 8044-22000-051-035-I
Project Type: Interagency Reimbursable Agreement
Start Date: Jun 9, 2025
End Date: Jun 15, 2026
Objective:
The objectives of this work are to: (1) Generate high quality genomic resources for geographically diverse Coniothyrium glycines isolates and close relatives to re-evaluate the phylogeny and species descriptions, and to (2) Investigate disease symptoms and morphological variation of the C. glycines clades and provide accessible taxonomic and diagnostic resources for efficient and precise identification by plant diagnosticians and border inspection agents.
Approach:
For objective 1, we will (i) collect C. glycines-infected leaves from under-sampled soybean-producing regions of Africa and isolate the causal agent; (ii) produce genome assemblies for 135+ C. glycines isolates from at least eight sub-Saharan African nations and for ten close relatives for use as outgroups; (iii) generate highly contiguous, near-chromosome level assemblies for six select isolates representing diverse clades; and (iv) re-evaluate C. glycines as a species and its placement within Coniothyrium using robust phylogenomics and population genomics methods.
For objective 2, we will (i) characterize fungal micro- and macromorphological structures and disease symptoms of isolates selected as representatives of various clades or species; (ii) curate an easily accessible library of images and taxonomic resources useful in disease diagnostics for the non-specialist; and (iii) create an asynchronous online workshop series to educate plant disease diagnosticians in the identification of C. glycines using resources generated by this study.