Getting a leg up on blackleg

New genomic research from Agriculture and Agri-food Canada (AAFC) could give agronomists a leg up in the fight against blackleg in canola.

Blackleg (Leptosphaeria maculans) is a severe fungal disease of canola plants, and with canola generating about one-quarter of all farm crop receipts in Canada, it is a serious threat to producers.

The new research was led by AAFC’s Dr. Fengqun Yu and her team of scientists at AAFC’s research and development centre in Saskatoon. The team recently completed the first large-scale resequencing of the blackleg pathogen.

Blackleg was first discovered in northeast Saskatchewan in 1975. The first sequencing was done by French and Australian scientists more than a decade ago. But while those efforts created a useful reference genome, they focused only on islolates collected in France.

“Our work focuses on sequencing Canadian isolates,” says Yu. “We collected isolates from Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta over about two decades. We really wanted to look at the whole picture; at the genetic variation in the isolates across the Prairies.”