Genomic surveillance urgently needed to control wheat blast pandemic spreading across continents

by Johanna Rhodes

A new study in PLOS Biology highlights the alarming potential of a pandemic clone of wheat blast disease to evolve fungicide-insensitive variants and argues the urgent need for genomic surveillance and preemptive breeding of resistant wheat. This Primer explores a new study in PLOS Biology which describes the alarming potential of a pandemic clone of wheat blast disease to evolve fungicide-insensitive variants, arguing the urgent need for genomic surveillance and pre-emptive breeding of resistant wheat.