New Focus on Soybean Webcast Highlights Oomycetes’ Role in Rot Resistance

Before soybean plant disease resistance can be achieved, it is important to understand what drives disease resistance and susceptibility.

This is the premise behind the latest Focus on Soybean webcast titled, “A Role for Oomycete Biology in the Development of Disease Resistant Soybean.” This webcast focuses on Phytophthora sojae, an oomycete pathogen that causes root and stem rot in soybean, which accounted for more than 2% of soybean crop losses in 2006.

In this webcast, author Kevin Fedkenheuer, Ph.D. Candidate at Virginia Tech, highlights the latest research on how P. Sojae infiltrates host cells, as well as how host resistance genes can prevent pathogen growth.

During his talk, Fedkenheuer also highlights three USDA-NIFA funded projects which are using oomycete biology to improve resistance against soybean root and stem rot. Through these projects and this webcast, the viewer can get a better understanding of the role oomycete biology plays in the development of disease resistant soybean, as well as the efforts to engineer durable resistance against soybean root and stem rot.

The research in this presentation was funded through a USDA Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) grant on oomycete diseases. This 9-minute presentation is fully open access thanks to funding from this grant.

This talk and other Focus on Soybean presentations can be viewed at www.plantmanagementnetwork.org/fos. Webcasts on a variety of other crops can be found in PMN’s Education Center.

Focus on Soybean is a publication of the Plant Management Network, (www.plantmanagementnetwork.org), a nonprofit online publisher whose mission is to enhance the health, management, and production of agricultural and horticultural crops. PMN achieves this mission by publishing applied, science-based resources for growers, consultants, and applied researchers.

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