Asian wild apples threatened by gene flow from domesticated apples and by their pestified pathogen

Abstract

1 7 1 8 1 9 3 1agricultural-type pathogen in wild forests. We detected a SNP predicting the ability of the 3 2 fungus to parasitize the different host populations, which induced an early stop codon in a 3 3 gene coding for a small secreted protein in the agricultural-type fungal population, thus 3 4 representing a putative avirulence gene which function loss would enable to parasitize 3 5 cultivated apples. Pathogenicity tests in fact revealed the pestification of V. inaequalis, with 3 6 higher virulence of the agricultural-type population on both wild and domesticated trees. Our 3 7 findings highlight the threat posed by cultivating a crop near its center of origin, with the 3 8invasion of a pestified pathogen on wild plants and introgression in the wild-type pathogen.