Wheat fungal endophyte communities are inseparable from the host and influence plant development.

Plants harbor complex and highly diverse fungal endophyte communities (FECs), making it difficult to evaluate the functional role of individual taxa, subsets of the community, or the FEC as a whole. To reduce the complexity of this system, we aimed to produce fungi-null wheat () plants. To this end, we treated seeds with heat and fungicides and generated plants from rescued embryos and callus tissue.

Serine peptidases and increased amounts of soluble proteins contribute to heat priming of the plant pathogenic fungus .

causes gray mold disease in leading crop plants. The disease develops only at cool temperatures, but the fungus remains viable in warm climates and can survive periods of extreme heat. We discovered a strong heat priming effect in which the exposure of to moderately high temperatures greatly improves its ability to cope with subsequent, potentially lethal temperature conditions.