Solanum tuberosum aspartic proteases (StAPs) with antimicrobial activity are induced after abiotic and biotic stress. In this study the ability of StAPs to produce a direct antimicrobial effect was investigated. Viability assays demonstrated that StAPs are able to kill spores of Fusarium solani and Phytophthora infestans in a dose-dependent manner. Localization experiments with FITC-labelled St...

Responsible for the Irish potato famine of 1845-49, the oomycete pathogen Phytophthora infestans caused persistent, devastating outbreaks of potato late blight across Europe in the 19th century. Despite continued interest in the history and spread of the pathogen, the genome of the famine-era strain remains entirely unknown. Here we characterize temporal genomic changes in introduced P. infesta...

Phenylamide-resistant isolates of Phytophthora infestans have gradually become an important part of populations in many countries. However, fungicide mixtures containing a phenylamide component are still an effective strategy for the control of late blight in potato and tomato. The proportion of phenylamide-resistant isolates fluctuates from year to year and within the season. Almost concurrent...

Phytophthora infestans is the most important fungal pathogen in the cultivated potato (Solanum tuberosum). Dominant, race-specific resistance alleles and quantitative resistance--the latter being more important for potato breeding--are found in the germplasm of cultivated and wild potato species. Quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for resistance to two races of P. infestans have been mapped in an F...

Phytophthora infestans (P. infestans) is the causal agent of potato late blight, which caused the devastating Irish Potato Famine during 1845-1852. Until now, potato late blight is still the most serious threat to potato growth and has caused significant economic losses worldwide. Melatonin can induce plant innate immunity against pathogen infection, but the direct effects of melatonin on plant...

As the oomycete pathogen causing potato late blight disease, Phytophthora infestans triggered the famous 19th-century Irish potato famine and remains the leading cause of global commercial potato crop destruction. But the geographic origin of the genotype that caused this devastating initial outbreak remains disputed, as does the New World center of origin of the species itself. Both Mexico and...

ABSTRACT Mycelium of Phytophthora infestans, the causal agent of potato late blight, can initiate crop infections over successive years by overwintering in infected potato tubers that survive as seed in fields or within cull piles. This study used four different genotypes of P. infestans to evaluate the influence of freezing temperatures on survival of mycelium in vitro. Sporangium-free myceliu...

ABSTRACT Sixty Ecuadorian isolates of Phytophthora infestans from potato and 60 isolates from tomato were compared for dilocus allozyme genotype, mitochondrial DNA haplotype, mating type, and specific virulence on 11 potato R-gene differential plants and four tomato cultivars, two of which contained different Ph genes. Restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) fingerprints of subsamples o...

Phytophthora infestans, the cause of potato late blight, is infamous for having triggered the Irish Great Famine in the 1840s. Until the late 1970s, P. infestans diversity outside of its Mexican center of origin was low, and one scenario held that a single strain, US-1, had dominated the global population for 150 years; this was later challenged based on DNA analysis of historical herbarium spe...

Transposable elements are ubiquitous residents in eukaryotic genomes. Often considered to be genomic parasites, they can lead to dramatic changes in genome organization, gene expression, and gene evolution. The oomycete plant pathogen Phytophthora infestans has evolved a genome organization where core biology genes are predominantly located in genome regions that have relatively few resident tr...