Fungi and food

Did you know, DPI employs over a dozen plant pathologists across NSW to help protect our crops from diseases?

Science week 2021 – FOOD

Plant pathology is the study of plant diseases. Plants can get sick from the same types of organisms that make humans sick. They get fungal and bacterial infections, and they can also catch viruses.

Our plant pathologists work in a number of different areas to help us fight these disease-causing microorganisms, including studying how they make plants sick, how to breed plants that can defend themselves, how we can control the diseases with chemicals or with natural predators and importantly, how we identify the cause of these diseases in the first place. This is called diagnostics.

A lot of our pathologists are mycologists, that’s the study of fungi. Over 70% of all known plant diseases are caused by fungi. Fungi can push their way into the plant, spread throughout and steal water and nutrients to produce spores that spread to more plants. This can happen rapidly, and the small spore sizes means they can be spread by wind, animals, water, insects and humans. It is hard to control the spread of fungal diseases, but our biosecurity system helps us keep unwanted pests and diseases from being introduced to Australia and spreading!

There are several fungal species on the National Priority Plant Pest list. These include fungi which infect native Myrtaceae (tea tree, bottle brush, eucalyptus), wheat, barley, cotton, bananas, grapes, and forestry trees like pine and Dutch elms.

Our plant pathologists in Biosecurity work to develop rapid diagnostic tools to help us identify exotic fungi that we don’t want in Australia. The Plant Health Diagnostic Service lab processes suspect samples by looking at the fungi under the microscope to examine the morphology (what it looks like) and they also extract DNA. Sometimes they grow the fungus out on special nutrient jelly called agar. This is so they can see the fungus better and get pure DNA samples.

Keeping plants healthy and protecting them from pests and diseases is important for the environment, agriculture and Australia. NSW DPI is proud to be leading the charge against these ‘most unwanted’ microorganisms. Learn how you can help by visiting www.missionbiosecurity.com.au

You can also hear from our plant pathologists Shannon Mulholland, Toni Chapman, and Angus Carnegie and the curators of our Biosecurity Collections at NSW DPI.