Rust fungi are obligate biotrophic pathogens that cause considerable damage on crop plants. Puccinia graminis f. sp. tritici, the causal agent of wheat stem rust, and Melampsora larici-populina, the poplar leaf rust pathogen, have strong deleterious impacts on wheat and poplar wood production, respectively. Filamentous pathogens such as rust fungi secrete molecules called disease effectors that...

The plant pathogenic rust fungi colonize leaf tissue and feed off their host plants without killing them. Certain economically important species of different genera such as Melampsora, Phakopsora, Puccinia, or Uromyces are extensively studied for resolving the mechanisms of the obligate biotrophy. As obligate parasites rust fungi only can complete their life cycle on living hosts where they gro...

The rust fungi are a monophyletic group of approximately 7000 species in the basidiomycota and are highly specialized obligate parasites of plants. The life cycle of rusts can be complex. Some rusts have up to five spore stages that alternate between haploid and dikaryotic nuclear conditions and that can occur on two taxonomically unrelated host plants. The rusts have evolved specialized struct...

The objective of this work was to develop and to evaluate adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference systems as methodology to describe the severity of soybean rust (Phakopsora pachyrhizi) monocyclic process in soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.], under effects of leaf wetness, temperature, and days after fungi inoculation. The experiment was conducted in growth chambers with mean air temperatures of 15, 20, ...

Pucciniales are an important group of fungal plant pathogens that cause rust diseases in a diverse group of hosts including ecologically and economically important crops and trees. Rust fungi have intriguing and complex life cycles and are obligate biotrophs. Because of their biological features, these fungi are very difficult to study under laboratory conditions. The recent advances in genomic...

The 5S ribosomal RNA nucleotide sequences of five basidiomycetous fungi, Coleosporium tussilaginis , Gymnosporangium clavariaeforme , Puccinia poarum , Endophyllum sempervivi and Microstroma juglandis were determined. Despite high differentiation in their host spectra the four rust species are highly conserved with respect to their 5S rRna sequences, which fit with the basidiomycete cluster 5 d...

To exploit plants as living substrates, biotrophic fungi have evolved remarkable variations of their tubular cells, the hyphae. They form infection structures such as appressoria, penetration hyphae and infection hyphae to invade the plant with minimal damage to host cells. To establish compatibility with the host, controlled secretory activity and distinct interface layers appear to be essenti...

Rusts are important pathogens of angiosperms and gymnosperms including cereal crops and forest trees. With respect to cereals, rust fungi are among the most important pathogens. Cereal rusts are heteroecious and macrocyclic requiring two taxonomically unrelated hosts to complete a five spore stage life cycle. Cereal rust fungi are highly variable for virulence and molecular polymorphism. Leaf r...

The Asian soybean rust fungus, Phakopsora pachyrhizi, is an obligate biotrophic pathogen causing severe soybean disease epidemics. Molecular mechanisms by which P. pachyrhizi and other rust fungi interact with their host plants are poorly understood. The genomes of all rust fungi encode many small, secreted cysteine-rich proteins (SSCRP). While these proteins are thought to function within the ...

Rust fungi (Basidiomycetes of the order Uredinales) are obligate biotrophs that grow and reproduce only in living plant tissue. There are on the order of 5000 or more species of rust fungi that collectively cause disease on most crops, ornamentals, and many other plants. For example, rusts caused by Puccinia species are some of the most important diseases of wheat and other small grain crops wo...