Magnaportheoryzae Case Study

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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background of study Since the beginning of agriculture humans have had to endure major crop losses because of disease. Even today, when crop health is under careful scrutiny, disease may suddenly strike and ruin an entire season's growth. Fungal plant pathogens play an important role in all our lives as they threaten food security, economic prosperity and natural environments. Many fungi produce biologically activecompounds, several of which are toxicto animals or plants and are therefore called mycotoxins. For instance, the infamous lethal amatoxinsin some Amanita mushrooms, and ergotalkaloids, which have a long history of causing serious epidemics of ergotism(St Anthony's Fire) in people consuming ryeor related cerealscontaminated with sclerotiaof the ergot fungus, Clavicepspurpurea.…show more content…
It is the anamorph or asexual state of Magnaportheoryzae established by Couch and Kohn (2002) as strains isolated from rice varieties and commonly known as the rice blast fungus. Magnaportheoryzae B. Couch (anamorphPyriculariaoryzaeCavara) formerly Magnaporthegrisea (Hebert) Barr (Zeigler et al., 1994 as cited by Zeigler and Correa, 2000; TeBeest et al., 2007; Zhang et al., 2011) has been described from the latter as a new species due to a multilocus gene genealogy concordant with host preference which indicated segregation of a new species (Couch and Kohn, 2002). It is a filamentous fungus (Citizendium, 2011), an ascomycete that produces sexual spores called ascospores inside an asci, currently under family Magnaporthaceae (TeBeest et al., 2007). The fungus is characterized by threecelled conidia which are pale brown to hyaline and pyriform (pear-like) in shape. When grown in pure culture, the fungal colony appears white, light gray or dark gray (Udagawa and Yaegashi, 1978 as cited by Harmon and Latin,

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