Effector Biology of Fusarium spp. in Banana

Background

Banana is considered to be the fourth most important crop for low and middle income countries in gross value production and is the most produced fruit worldwide. Besides serving as a healthy snack in the West, millions of people subsist on a diet primarily consisting of carbohydrates from banana, mainly in Eastern and Central Africa. However, global banana production is under constant threat by numerous different pathogens and pests. One of the most important threats is Fusarium wilt of Banana (FWB). Despite the immense threat posed by FWB, especially once caused by the variant known as Tropical Race 4 (TR4), efficient control methods are essentially absent. Furthermore, very few banana varieties show resistance to TR4, and essentially none when important agronomic traits are taken into consideration. Because of this, it is essential to have a better understanding of the interaction between Fusarium species and banana to support the development of resistant banana varieties.

Project description

Currently, phenotyping banana for resistance against Fusarium pathogens relies on cumbersome phenotyping assays. In addition, relatively little is known about the pathogen-host interaction at a molecular level. In other well studied pathosystems, the study of so-called effector proteins provided great insight into the molecular arms race between pathogen and host. Furthermore, knowledge on these effector proteins has been successfully used to explore resistance in germplasm. Therefore, the aim of this project is to discover effector proteins in the different Fusarium species causing FWB, and to study their diversity and importance, which can be used to develop novel phenotyping assays to accelerate the resistance breeding process.