Our group focuses on various emerging "tree" pathogens such as the banana pathogen Xanthomonas vasicola pv. musacearum and Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense Tropical Race 4 (Foc TR4) as well as their hosts, ensete (orphan to Ethiopia) and banana. As part of this research theme, PhD student Sadik is generating high-quality genomic data for enset (Ensete ventricosum) and is also looking into sources of resistance in enset to Xanthomonas wilt. Further, PhD student Jamie is developing new tools for the diagnosis and detection of Foc TR4, employing novel bioinformatic pipelines and untargeted metabolomics approaches.

In collaboration with James Brown (JIC) we have also applied untargeted metabolomics to discriminate the metabolome of European ash trees which are tolerant or susceptible to the ash dieback fungus Hymenpscyphus fraxineusi and are developing a diagnostic assay.

Find Out More

Towards Engineering Resistance Against Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense 

Retaining the Ashes

Contact Our Researchers:

Email Jamie here: Jamie.Pike@warwick.ac.uk.

To find out more about or work on enste, email Sadik: Sadik.Muzemil@warwick.ac.uk