The ‘Plant Pathology’ Best Student Paper prize for 2020 has been awarded to Ines Vazquez-Iglesias from Fera Science Ltd/University of Newcastle, UK, for her paper entitled ‘Facing Rose rosette virus: A risk to European rose cultivation’ (vol. 69, 1603–1617, https://bsppjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ppa.13255).
This paper is a Plant Pathogen Impacts review and a collaboration between Fera Science Ltd UK, the University of Newcastle, Oklahoma State University, USA, the Ministry for Primary Industries, New Zealand and the Royal Horticultural Society, UK. The virus was originally described in North America in the 1940s and is transmitted by eriophyid mites, and this review details the threat of this virus to European and world-wide rose cultivation, the routes through which it might spread, and the approaches being developed to try and prevent this through effective diagnostics and screening for the virus and its vector in traded plant materials.
The ‘Molecular Plant Pathology’ Best Student Paper prize for 2020 has been awarded to Jiming Li at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, for his paper entitled ‘Related mobile pathogenicity chromosomes in Fusarium oxysporum determine host range on cucurbits’ (vol. 21, 761–776, https://bsppjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mpp.12927).
This original research article uncovers the molecular basis of this destructive wilt disease of melon. Fusarium oxysporum strains infect different hosts and carry additional chromosomes that can be transferred between strains. Exploiting horizontal chromosome transfer (HCT), Jiming Li discovers here that a particular segment of a chromosome from a melon-infecting strain is responsible for differences in host range, narrowing down the search from the underlying gene(s).
Jiming is now working in Shenzhen, China.
Both papers are Open Access.
Congratulations to Ines and Jiming!
