Farmers can now sigh out a relief with the discovery of ways to combat a destructive group of plant pathogens called Phytophthora. This plant destroyer attacks a broad range of plants, costing billions of dollars in agriculture, forestry and nursery industries each year.



An international team of scientists has sequenced two Phytophthora genomes of P. ramorum and P. sojae. And this decoding is breakthrough in helping scientists devise strategies for combating not only these two species, but also other 80 species of the fungus-like disease-causing Phytophtora.



The study is published in the Sept. 1 issue of the journal Science.33720