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Surveillance and early detection of emerging diseases are critical to control pathogen spread. Like zoonotic diseases, plant pathogens that cause destructive crop diseases often originate from wild hosts. However, surveys of major plant pathogens tend to be skewed towards crops and often neglect their wild host plants. We recently reported an emerging disease threat caused by the blast fungus Magnaporthe (Syn. Pyricularia) spp. in central Europe. We found that this notoriously devastating plant pathogen infects wild grasses in Germany, a region previously deemed unfavourable for blast disease. Using phenotypic characterization and genomic analyses, we determined that the ob- served disease symptoms are associated with the foxtail millet-infect- ing lineage of M. oryzae and its sister species M. grisea. We showed that M. oryzae isolates can infect barley and wheat, thus highlighting the risk of pathogen spread to crops. In addition, M. oryzae isolates which co-occur in natural populations display compatible mating types and variable candidate effector gene content, which may enhance the pathogen’s adaptive potential. Our findings stress the risk of blast fun- gus infections expanding into the central European cereal belt through migration and host jumps, underlining the importance for pathogen surveillance in both, crops and wild grasses.
