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ARS Home » Plains Area » Fargo, North Dakota » Edward T. Schafer Agricultural Research Center » Sugarbeet Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #420398
Research Project: Improving Sugarbeet Productivity and Sustainability through Genetic, Genomic, Physiological, and Phytopathological Approaches

Location: Sugarbeet Research

Title: Genome-wide evidence of host specialization in wild and farmland populations of the Cercospora leaf spot pathogen, Cercospora beticola

Author
item TALIADOROS, DEMETRIS - Christian Albrechts University
item POTGIETER, LIZEL - Swedish University Of Agricultural Sciences
item DHIMAN, AMAR - Plant Breeding Institute
item MCMULLAN, MARK - Earlham Institute
item Wyatt, Nathan
item JUNG, CHRISTIAN - Plant Breeding Institute
item Bolton, Melvin
item STUKENBROCK, EVA - Max Planck Institute For Evolutionary Biology

Submitted to: Genome Biology and Evolution
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 2/20/2025
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary: Fungal pathogens have detrimental impacts on food production. Particularly concerning is the continuous emergence and dispersal of new or adapted pathogens; a phenomenon that may accelerate with global climate change. Understanding the origin of crop pathogens is crucial to prevent the emergence of future epidemics and aid in forecasting rates of dispersal and adaptation, especially when crop wild relatives are grown in proximity to their crop host. Here, we used a global collection of Cercospora beticola (causal agent of Cercospora leaf spot of sugarbeet) strains collected from cultivated sugarbeet and the sugarbeet wild relative, sea beet. We show that the wild relative pathogen population may act as a reservoir of new traits that enable plant infection or confer fungicide resistance. This information is critical to agronomists, extension pathologists, and growers as it highlights the importance of management strategies that account for crop wild relatives or alternative hosts where reservoirs of new adaptive pathogen traits may lurk.

Technical Abstract: Domestication of plants has been a continuous human endeavor since the dawn of agriculture more than 10,000 years ago. Examples of recent plant domestication efforts include forest berries like blueberries and the rocket plant. Another crop that was domesticated within the last few centuries in Europe is sugar beet.Crop domestication can also lead to the evolution of new plant pathogens and result in novel epidemics. In this study, we addressed the recent evolution of the Cercospora leaf spot pathogen, Cercospora beticola, a pathogen that is increasingly important in sugar beet production worldwide, and for which fungicide resistance is a growing concern. To this end, we used genome sequences of 326 isolates from four continents and four closely related beet subspecies (three domesticated and one wild). Cercospora beticola is also a common pathogen of the wild progenitor of sugar beet, sea beet (B. vulgaris ssp. maritima), and we applied population genomic analyses to identify signatures of population differentiation and host specialization in C. beticola populations derived from wild and cultivated hosts. We find evidence that C. beticola populations in the agro-ecosystem originate from sea beet-infecting isolates; intriguingly host jumps from wild to cultivated beet has occurred at independent events as evidenced by our population data of C. beticola Mediterranean region and the UK. Our results highlight the ability of C. beticola to invade the agro-ecosystem and establish new populations, showing the rapid adaptation potential of the species. Furthermore, structure analysis revealed host-driven population structure and abundance of DMI fungicide resistance associated loci in farmland populations around the world.