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Constant coevolution between plants and pathogens in natural environment leads to a sustainable equilibrium of constant change in term of resistance and virulence factors, which is decoupled in cultivated agrosystems.

A better knowledge on pathogen’s evolution and diversity in natural systems would: i) bring new insight into pathogen’s evolution potential under various environmental conditions; ii) clarify relationships between pathogens from wild or cultivated host reservoirs; iii) create new models for studying natural plant-pathogen interaction by confronting known host and pathogen diversity in coevolving populations.

In this project, we sample and assess diversity of the well-known bacteria Ralstonia solanacearum species complex, causal agent of bacterial wilt and the oomycete Phytophthora infestans, causal agent of late blight, in the natural and diverse habitats of Peru. We focus our search on wild tomato relatives exhibiting various levels of resistance to those pathogens. The outcomes for this project are: i) to assess the feasibility of such campaign, even at larger scale; ii) assess two pathogens diversity in a broad range of climates and on different host species; iii) create, characterise and maintain collections of isolates as material for further studies.

These results will fuel future projects in genetics and genomics of host and pathogens, and contribute to the durability assessment in disease resistance breeding.