Researchers have a new understanding of the genetic makeup of a fungus that causes the disease Wheat Stripe Rust, one of the most destructive wheat diseases globally costing $1 billion annually.
Research that could transform global rice production by increasing yields from the world’s number one food crop has been boosted by five more years of funding.
Some clever detective work by an international team of scientists has uncovered how a deadly fungus - a stem rust called Ug99 - came about through some unusual breeding habits. The discovery will help protect wheat crops around the world from devastating fungal diseases.
Researchers at The Australian National University (ANU) have shown how Australian wheat crops would cope if a destructive disease that’s yet to hit our shores ever made it into the country.
Rust diseases significantly threaten cereals and other crops, causing substantial losses in crop production worldwide and endangering global food security.
Endogenous retroviruses (ERVs), also known as retrotransposons, essentially carry two open reading frames that code for GAG and POL. Some ERVs additionally carry a third gene called envelope (env), becoming infectious.
Phylogenetic distance is a key measure used to develop host test lists that will delimit the fundamental and realised host range of candidate biocontrol agents.
Our group is broadly interested in understanding how metazoan cells fold complex proteins, and how the need to fold those proteins impacts their ability to evolve.
Rubisco is the most abundant protein on earth, catalysing photosynthetic CO2 fixation to provide all usable carbon in the biosphere. However, its slow and non-specific catalytic activity limits crop productivity and its resultant over-production represents a huge nitrogen cost.