A fab bunch of talks for Session 1 Disease Management in Practice #PPATH2025 🌾 Helen Bates @niab-uk.bsky.social 🥔 Ashleigh Holmes @hutton.ac.uk 🧬 Aimee Fowkes - Fera x @newcastleuni.bsky.social 🍓 Avice Hall @herts.ac.uk

Sea couch #SeedHeads, some infected with ergot fungus. On the sand dunes at Bridgwater Bay. #WildFlowerHour

I always enjoy getting the chance to go out botanising in the field with the @wildflowersociety.bsky.social . This morning's plants included Silver cinquefoil Potentilla argentea, and the stunning hybrid goat's-beard Tragopogon x mirabilis.

We've seen lots of examples of parallel evolution at the point mutation level in fungicide target encoding genes (onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...), and now @thorstenlangner.bsky.social has found repeated evolution of point mutations in a plant pathogen effector, too!

New paper out now in @britmycolsoc.org.uk Fungal Biology Reviews. Learning from fungicide resistance: Evolutionary insights to guide RNAi-based control of fungal crop pathogens. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Ash flower galls, caused by a mite, Acerina fraxinivora. A heavy infestation like this will reduce seed production but won't kill the tree.

Viper's bugloss in the evening sunlight #WildFlowerHour #HairyPlants

A great day hearing from other plant-related research groups around Cambridge.

This week I've been in France for a project meeting of our JPI-AMR project, Aerobiomics-AMR. Between meetings, we saw one of the Cyclone spore traps in action, visited Arvalis field trials with very high levels of brown rust, and stayed in the lovely town of St. Quentin.

For the #WildFlowerHour #PinkFamily challenge, White campion with bonus #WildPlantDisease Anther smut.

For the past few months I've been working on bringing to life something that I think is really needed: a field guide to plant pathogens (focusing on fungi and oomycetes). It has gotten to the point where I feel I can share it publically - read more at irishplants.org/blog/2025/03... ! #FungiFriends

Fungal antimicrobial resistance: online mini-symposium, March 27th. Cutting-edge genomics & fungal AMR breakthroughs with world-leading experts (and me!)

I am very excited that @target-amr.bsky.social and the Fungal AMR One Health network (www.fungalamr.org) are organising an online mini-symposium on Fungal AMR Genomics on 25 March 1-4 pm GMT. Please sign up here! www.targetamr.org.uk/hdrevents/jo...

First celandine of the year! #WildFlowerHour

Spring must be on the way, I found #theWinter10 just walking to the shops. Red deadnettle, white deadnettle, daisy, dandelion, groundsel, common field speedwell, green alkanet, shepherd's purse, chickweed, storksbill. #WildFlowerHour

Experimental evolution under alternating conditions gave rise to "localized hypermutation", showing experimentally how two-speed genomes could evolve...

Egret spotted on the @niab-uk.bsky.social Cambridge trial ground today.

Brilliant talk by @sandyknapp.bsky.social at @bsbibotany.bsky.social conference on the importance of taxonomic botany for food security (among many other things): quantifying evolutionary rates and adaptive potential in crops requires a detailed phylogeny of wild relatives for comparative studies.

So I finally joined 🦋 during the train journey to London for the @bsbibotany.bsky.social British and Irish Botany Conference. Lovely to see a full house of botanists at the Natural History Museum.