Engineering tolerance to Botrytis in soft fruit crops

灰霉病（Botrytis cinerea），即灰霉病，是软果作物常见的坏死性真菌病原菌，每年造成巨大的经济损失。病原体喜欢感染受损或衰老的组织，如花和果实，最终导致组织死亡。栽培草莓（草莓x ananassa）加入似乎是普遍易感的，虽然灰霉病的发病率和严重程度的变化已被报道。在野生祖种智利草莓和弗吉尼亚草莓中已经报道了抗性/耐受性。几种已知的真菌抑制剂在抗性F. chiloensis种质，但抗性机制尚不清楚。在乌藨子中，所知的要少得多，尽管对甘蔗灰霉病的抗性与控制甘蔗短柔毛的基因H有关。NIAB EMR收集了野生草莓材料，可以筛选对灰霉病的抗性/耐受性。它也有丰富的基因组数据的栽培草莓和几个野生品种，可以挖掘存在的已知成分的耐受B。灰叶目前，公开的树莓基因组资源很少;这阻碍了对包括抗病性在内的一系列性状的研究。该项目将围绕以下问题展开：1）蔷薇科-葡萄孢属相互作用的遗传成分是什么？2)什么可以有效地从野生物种带到种植草莓和树莓，以防止B。cinerea？项目目标：1.在对照试验中筛选草莓和树莓材料，包括野生近缘种对灰霉病的耐性/抗性.对栽培草莓的遗传途径进行了研究。cinerea和乌藨子B.灰霉病的侵染过程进行分子分析.利用野生草莓中已知的致病相关蛋白转化栽培草莓和树莓（使用CRISPR），并确定对葡萄孢菌定殖的影响。该项目的成果将有助于更好地了解这种具有重要经济意义的疾病，并将导致育种材料的改进，减少这种毁灭性疾病的损失，并为草莓和树莓积累资源。

Botrytis cinerea, Grey Mould disease, is a common necrotrophic fungal pathogen of soft fruit crops and causes huge economic losses each year. The pathogen prefers to infect damaged or senescing tissues, such as flowers and fruit, eventually leading to tissue death. Cultivated strawberry (Fragaria x ananassa) accessions appear to be universally susceptible, although variation of incidence and severity of grey mould has been reported. Resistance/tolerance has been reported in the wild progenitors Fragaria chiloensis and Fragaria virginiana. Several known fungal inhibitors are highly induced in resistant F. chiloensis accessions, but the mechanism of resistance is not understood. In raspberry, much less is known, although resistance to cane botrytis has been associated with Gene H, which controls cane pubescence. NIAB EMR has a collection of wild strawberry material that can be screened for resistance/tolerance to grey mould. It also has wealth of genomic data on the cultivated strawberry and several wild accessions, which can be mined for presence of known components of tolerance to B. cinerea. At present, there are very few genomic resources publicly available for raspberry; this is hampering research on a range of traits including disease resistance. The project will focus around the following questions: 1) What are the genetic components of Rosaceae-Botrytis interactions? 2) What can usefully be brought from wild species into cultivated strawberry and raspberry to protect against B. cinerea?Project objectives:1. Screen diverse strawberry and raspberry material, including wild relatives for tolerance/resistance to Botrytis fruit rot in controlled experiments.2. Characterise the genetic pathways of the cultivated strawberry-B. cinerea and raspberry-B. cinerea through molecular analyses of the infection process.3. Transform cultivated strawberry and raspberry (using CRISPR) with known pathogenesis-related proteins from wild strawberry and determine effects on Botrytis colonisation.Outputs from this project will lead to a greater understanding of this economically important disease but will lead to improvements in breeding material, reducing losses from this devastating disease, as well as building up resources for strawberry and raspberry.