The expression pattern of 90 bean genes upon rust infection shares several features with other legumes infected by biotrophic fungi.
Seedlings were classified for stem rust infection type (IT) 12-14 d after inoculation by scoring the infected primary leaf from each plant (Stakman et al. 1962; Roelfs and Martens 1988).
Rust infection also tended to be lower in northern populations (mean proportion of rust-infected plants in northern populations: 0.07; in southern populations: 0.26) but this difference was not statistically significant (t-test of north south comparison: t = −1.64, df = 16, p = 0.12).
Among the 136 metabolic pathways identified as active in infected white pine needles, 90 of them were affected significantly by rust infection.
Only the Rocky Mountain population has shown blister rust infection, though experts say it is only a matter of time before it reaches all groves.
N nutrition is known to affect the level of stripe rust infection, with higher N associated with increased disease severity.
Parsimonious combinations of historically important predictors of blister rust provided effective logistic models (AUC = 0.83) for predicting blister rust infection in whitebark pines at our sites.
Results indicate that wild oat is the superior competitor at the seedling stage; however, early rust infection greatly reduces fitness of wild oats, causing an increased fitness for stipa.
In contrast, whilst BTH inhibited rust infection, it promoted beetle attack.
In contrast, prior rust infection should induce SA-dependent pathways and increase the attractiveness of the plant to beetles.
