MURDOCH is home to the new $3.2 million Australian Centre for Necrotrophic Fungal Pathogens, which will be working towards protecting crops from these damaging diseases.

Necrotrophic plant diseases, which include blotches, spots and blights, lose Australia more than $170 million each year in crop losses.

The centre’s director, Professor Richard Oliver, said one of the first projects would be to overcome wheat blotch, the most damaging wheat pathogen in Australia.

The team will identify genes from the fungus and develop genetic manipulation methods to understand their role in causing disease.

Professor Oliver gained expertise in this field during his previous 12 years at the University of East Anglia, a four-year appointment as the Professor of Physiology at the Carlsberg Laboratory in Copenhagen and from a short period with the agrochemical giant Zeneca (formerly ICI, now Syngenta).

Though now more focused towards brewing, the Carlsberg Laboratory was formerly renowned for basic research leading to such diverse discoveries including the concept of pH, the first pure culture of yeast and the migration of eels to the Sargasso Sea.

At the Carlsberg Laboratory Professor Oliver was using similar techniques to study another type of plant disease caused by barley powdery mildew.

Professor Oliver is joined by a growing group of researchers, many of whom have worked with him previously.

His team includes Dr Peter Solomon, a microbial biochemist who will specialise in the genetic manipulation of the wheat blotch pathogen, and Dr Stephen Thomas, a plant molecular biologist, who will work on unravelling the fungal DNA sequence.

Both were post-doctoral fellows under Professor Oliver at the Carlsberg Laboratory.

The group has also been joined by one of Professor Oliver’s ex-PhD students from the University of East Anglia, Dr Simon Ellwood, working on the the second major project, the genetics of disease resistance.

Ms Kerrie Parker, from the University of Sydney, is the group’s research assistant.