A Method to Detect and Quantify Eutypa lata and Diplodia seriata-Complex DNA in Grapevine Pruning Wounds.

Trunk diseases are factors that limit sustainability of vineyards worldwide. Botryosphaeria and Eutypa diebacks are caused by several fungi belonging to the Botryosphaeriaceae and Diatrypaceae, respectively, with Diplodia seriata and Eutypa lata being two of the most common species. Previous information indicated that the traditional isolation method used to detect these pathogens from plant samples could underestimate their incidence levels.

Closed-reference metatranscriptomics enables in planta profiling of putative virulence activities in the grapevine trunk disease complex.

Grapevines, like other perennial crops, are affected by so-called 'trunk diseases', which damage the trunk and other woody tissues. Mature grapevines typically contract more than one trunk disease and often multiple grapevine trunk pathogens (GTPs) are recovered from infected tissues. The co-existence of different GTP species in complex and dynamic microbial communities complicates the study of the molecular mechanisms underlying disease development, especially under vineyard conditions.

Tracing the geographic origins of major avocado cultivars.

It has been difficult to infer the genetic history of avocado breeding, owing to the role of hybridization in the origin of contemporary avocado cultivars. To address this difficulty, we used the model-based clustering program, STRUCTURE, and nucleotide polymorphism in 5960 bp of sequence from 4 nuclear loci to examine population structure in 21 wild avocado accessions. The origins of 33 cultivars were inferred relative to the wild sample.

Persea americana (avocado): bringing ancient flowers to fruit in the genomics era.

The avocado (Persea americana) is a major crop commodity worldwide. Moreover, avocado, a paleopolyploid, is an evolutionary "outpost" among flowering plants, representing a basal lineage (the magnoliid clade) near the origin of the flowering plants themselves. Following centuries of selective breeding, avocado germplasm has been characterized at the level of microsatellite and RFLP markers.