Biological Characteristics and Assessment of Virulence Diversity in Pathosystems of Economically Important Biotrophic Oomycetes

Plant biotrophic oomycetes cause significant production problems and economic losses in modern agriculture and are controlled by fungicide applications and resistance breeding. However, high genetic variability and fast adaptation of the pathogens counteract these measures. As a consequence of the “arms race,” new pathogen phenotypes recurrently occur and may rapidly dominate the population when selected through the pressure of control measures....