Scientists have reanimated a coffee-wilting fungus in an effort to discover how it evolved and how its devastating spread can be prevented.
The fungal specimen which causes Coffee Wilt Disease has led to numerous devastating outbreaks in sub-Saharan Africa since the 1920s and is currently affecting two of the most popular coffee varieties in Africa: Robusta and Arabica.
Importance of Studying the Coffee-Wilting Fungus
Research evidence suggests that the fungus becomes most infectious to coffee plants by acquiring new genes from a related fungus that is known to cause wilting diseases on a variety of crops like the Panama disease in bananas.
Scientists say that the knowledge gathered from the reanimation could aid farmers to reduce the risks of new strains emerging by not planting coffee varieties together with other crops or removing the build-up of plant debris that could possibly harbor related fungus.
Researchers from the University of Oxford, Imperial College London, and the Center for Agriculture and Bioscience International (CABI) say that studying the historical samples can provide insight into how the coffee-wilting fungus evolved and find new sustainable ways to combat them. CABI, based in the United Kingdom, is a not-for-profit inter-governmental development and information organization focused on agricultural and environmental issues.
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Re-animating 70-year-old Coffee- Wilting Fungus
The study, "Historical genomics reveals the evolutionary mechanisms behind multiple outbreaks of the host-specific coffee wilt pathogen Fusarium xylarioides", was published in the journal BMC Genomics. It was led by Lily Peck who told Phys.Org that using high volumes of chemical fungicides to combat emerging crop diseases isn't affordable nor sustainable for many growers.
She added that if researchers could better understand the new forms of disease evolution, then they can provide growers with the knowledge they need to minimize the risks of new diseases emerging in their crops.
There have been two serious outbreaks from the 1920s to the 1950s and between the 1990s and 2000s, causing severe damage. In 2011, roughly 55,000 Robusta trees were killed due to Coffee Wilt Disease in Tanzania, destroying about 160 tons of coffee in the process.
Scientists re-animated from a cryogenic state sample of the fungus that is known to cause Coffee Wild Disease.
In CABI's secure lab, researchers re-awakened two strains of the fungus from the original outbreak collected in the 1950s. Two strains came from two coffee-wild fungal strains, with the most recent coming from a 2003 outbreak. Researchers then sequenced the fungal genomes and examined their DNA in search of evidence of evolution that could help scientists identify how it infected specific coffee varieties.
The researchers discovered that the genes were highly similar to those found in related fungus affecting roughly 120 different crops, including the Panama disease affecting bananas in sub-Saharan Africa that are currently infecting common crop varieties like the Cavendish banana.
Bananas and coffee are often planted together since coffee plants thrive in the shade provided by the tall banana trees. Researchers say that the study could suggest to growers to avoid growing the two crops together to effectively reduce the risks of new strains of the coffee-wilting fungus from emerging in plantations.
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