Work

From herbarium to life: Implications of reviving historical fungi for modern plant pathology and agriculture

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: strains from the early 1940s and performed phenotypic, genomic, transcriptomic, and metabolomic analyses. Comparisons with modern strains revealed significant differences, including adaptations likely driven by fungicide use and environmental pressures such as host-specific pathogenicity and pH tolerance. Our findings highlight the value of natural history collections and demonstrate how archived pathogens can be revisited with advanced omic technologies to reveal long-term ecological and evolutionary changes. These insights are crucial for plant disease management, outbreak prediction, biodiversity conservation, and advancing sustainable agriculture practices.

Source: iScience

DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2025.112904