Projects for October 2026 entry are closed for applications. Round 3 is open to Home Fee Status applicants only. For details on the application process, please visit the 'How to apply' page.
What makes a plant killer lose its edge? This project will investigate why fungal pathogens lose virulence when they are grown in laboratory culture away from their host plant. Use cutting-edge molecular biology and genomics, we will try to solve a decades-old mystery in plant pathology.
With the human population projected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050, the looming challenge of feeding the rapidly growing population is threatened by plant pathogens, which cause significant losses in crop yield each year.
The world’s food supply is under pressure from climate change, shortages of water as well as agriculture pests and diseases. One of the most devastating diseases of rice is caused by blast fungus (Magnaporthe oryzae), which also is the causal agent of the recent wheat blast outbreak in Asia.