ABSTRACT
Phytopathogenic fungi cause many of the world’s most notorious plant diseases and damage crops worth billions of dollars annually (Strange and Scott 2005, Buckley 2005). The losses caused by fungi could be either from reduction in yield or quality of the produce and this entirely depends on the fungus and crop combination and the nature of this interaction. In general, the biology, epidemiology and host-pathogen interaction
have been historically studied, and information at the molecular level underpinning the biology and the fungal interactions with their host are becoming available only recently. Understanding the genetic basis of the fungus-host interactions and identifi cation of specifi c genes involved in fungal pathogenicity is an ongoing endeavor because of the complexity of genes involved in fungal infection and disease development. In addition, the disease development requires coordinated regulation of gene expression and interaction between thousands of genes within the fungal genome making it even more challenging to understand the fungal pathogenicity (Schafer 1994, Oliver and Osbourn 1995, Hamer and Holden 1997, Knogge 1998). Our current understanding of the nature of fungus-host interactions has been derived from genetic manipulation of individual genes and gene products through the construction of null mutants, gene expression analysis and complete gene characterization.
