Genomics of Fungal Plant Pathogens, 3rd Edition

Dear Colleagues,

Fungi cause most of the severe plant diseases that endanger food safety worldwide. Resistance to fungal pathogens is a major target of breeders; however, the unexpected mutation of avirulence genes has caused a boom and burst cycle in resistance and resistance breakdown. Fungicide-based chemical control is still the most important method to control plant fungal diseases, but most fungicides induce fungi to develop fungicide resistance. Many scientists are working on these aspects to develop ecological control strategies for plant fungal diseases. Recent advances in sequencing technologies have led to remarkable progress in understanding plant–fungal interactions based on the dissection of fungal genomes. Many important plant pathogenic fungi have successfully been studied using the second and third-generation sequencing approaches. Increasingly, functional genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics are being applied to study plant fungal pathogens. The development of advanced genomic tools and infrastructure is also making great progress. These increasing amounts of data will provide useful information to improve our understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved in host–pathogen interactions, in order to better understand fungal genome features, such as repetitive sequences, telomeres, conserved syntenic blocks, and the expansion of pathogenicity-related genes. The findings of these studies can be exploited to optimize beneficial interactions and to develop new plant-protection strategies.

This Special Issue is aimed at compiling research, reviews, and opinion articles covering new scientific discoveries in plant–fungal genomics. Articles covering new insights in genomic sequencing, functional genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, molecular biology, ecology dissection, and the molecular mechanisms involved in plant–fungal interactions at the genome level are welcomed.

Prof. Dr. Zonghua Wang
Dr. Zhenhui Zhong
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Journal of Fungi is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• plant pathogen
• genomic sequencing
• functional genomics
• molecular biology