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Plant Pathology 2023
Birmingham, UK
6th – 8th September 2023
Thanks to the support from the BSPP I had an opportunity to attend the annual BSPP Plant Pathology 2023 meeting. This was my first plant pathology-focused conference, and I was excited to hear a variety of talks covering topics of pathogen effectors, evolution, disease management and climate predictions. The conference was opened by Prof Robert Jackson who, in his presidential talk, gave an interesting overview of his career, highlighting different aspects of plant pathology and the importance of collaboration in science. This was followed by amazing talks, of which a couple I found particularly interesting: Given by Jiorgos Koureli, about using synthetic biology to design plant immune receptor; and by Wenbo Ma, explaining how Phytophthora uses modular effectors to evade recognition.
One of the highlights of the conference was a session organised by the AAB Applied Plant Pathology specialist group titled ‘Climate change-induced patterns of plant pests and pathogens’. It was interesting to see quite a few talks explaining the importance of climate change in pathogen spread, and hear about new technologies that can be used to predict and combat this.
As I am working with a fungal pathogen Puccinia hordei causing brown rust on barley, I was especially looking forward to hearing about the research on rust pathogens. Indeed a few posters were looking at the resistant factors protecting against different rust-causing pathogens, which gave me ideas of what to look for in my data.
It was very nice to see a high number of student presentations. Me and twelve other PhD students were chosen to give a presentation about our work and be considered for the PH Gregory Award. This gave me an opportunity to introduce proteomics techniques which I use in my research, to understand the role of plant ubiquitin system during the plant-pathogen interactions.
Finally, besides amazing science, there were also plenty of opportunities during the conference for networking, whether during the lunch breaks, drink reception or the conference dinner. Thank you to the BSPP for giving me an opportunity to attend this conference and hear about the exciting new research.
Karolina Brzezinska
University of Edinburgh
