From Snodprot to Snogs
In early 2000, I was asked to start a research group on necrotrophic disease of importance in Australia. One of the two choices was easy because septoria nodorum blotch was both one of the most important necrotrophs and a pathogen with a good (for the time) set of functional genomic tools. SNB technology had been established by Chris Caten and was one of the key pathogens used by the agrochemical industry as a model for fungicide discovery. Together with a select group of colleagues, we set out to uncover genes important in infection, confident that such knowledge would solve the problem. The knowledge did solve a problem but not in the way we had predicted. One key factor was a global collaboration. Currently we can make the claim that SNB is not only one of the best studied plant diseases, it is also one that has generated a large economic return for Australian farmers.