APPS 2025 Program Overview

Read Tuesday, 27th May as one working day for plant pathology in Australasia, from citrus history to open data. You will see how keynotes on collections framed concurrent work on climate, host interactions, microbiomes and global biosecurity, plus a long poster session at lunch.

The details cited in this entry were checked on the apps-2025 page.

Citrus opens the day with past, present and future

The Daniel McAlpine Lecture gives the morning its historical frame. Dr Nerida Donovan speaks on citrus pathology in Australia, with past, present and future in the title. If you work with citrus or follow disease records over time, you get a clear entry point here because you can place later talks on surveillance and diagnostics against longer patterns in one crop group. The APPS 2025 retrospective puts this kind of lecture where it belongs, at the start of a day rather than lost among concurrent rooms.

Why do reference collections underpin biosecurity?

Keynote 3 stays with collections and their public role. Dr Susie Collins speaks on scientific reference collections as critical to Australia's biosecurity. You are asked to think about naming, preservation and comparison, because a suspect sample means little until you can check it against vouchered specimens and cultures. For students and diagnosticians, the takeaway is practical. Keep the link between field symptoms, laboratory results and lodged specimens, so later workers can test your call.

How do fungal collections speed up unusual identifications?

Keynote 4 continues the same thread from a fungal angle. Dr Megan Romberg speaks on fungal collections assisting in rapid identification of unusual samples to support biosecurity. You can picture the workflow from this title. An unusual mould or fruiting body arrives, curators compare morphology and sequence data with their holdings, and the response team gets a faster identification. Morning tea sits between the two collection keynotes and the next keynote, which gives you time to compare notes before concurrent sessions split the audience.

Spores, climate and wounds in orchards and vineyards

The Big Data, Monitoring and Climate session moves you outside. Spotlight speaker Prof Jan Leach speaks on building resilience and managing plant disease in a changing climate. Around that talk you find monitoring spore release by Phlyctema vagabunda in apple orchards from Kerry R. Everett, insights into grapevine trunk disease pathogen spore deposits on pruning wounds from Tarita Furlan, work on environmental conditions and fruit phenology modulating Phomopsis husk rot development in macadamia from Vivian A. Rincon-Florez, and climatic suitability for establishment of Ceratocystis species in Pacific countries from Hasna Luna. If you advise growers, you can use this set to link weather, crop stage and wound exposure in your own planning.

What happens when pathogens share one host?

The Interactions session on disease complexes looks at co-infection and competition. You find inter- and intra-pathogen interactions from co-infection with different fungal and viral strains in canola cultivars with distinct host resistances from Nuraizat Abidin, oomycetes and nectriaceous fungi associated with avocado root rot in Australia from Jacob Jose, infighting among Curtobacterium flaccumfaciens pv. flaccumfaciens isolates during tan spot infections of mung bean from Noel L. Knight, fungal communities associated with myrtle rust infection and the use of mycoparasites as potential biocontrol agents from Dan Cu, competing subtropical race 4 versus race 1 Fusarium wilt challenge in banana from Janet M. Roberts, and fungi in the Botryosphaeriales associated with mango dieback in the Northern Territory from Birendra BK Kunwar. You can follow the full Tuesday program through this detailed list if you want to check talk order against your interests.

Rhizosphere, phyllosphere and suppressive soils

A second Interactions session turns to the microbiome. Nicola Haggerty Mayers discusses functionality in rhizosphere microbial communities and future directions for plant-soil interactions. Hanareia Ehau-Taumaunu presents phyllosphere relationships of Maire Tawake and neighboring plants. Dick Andoh links soil microbial communities to tree health in Eucalyptus nitens under Teratosphaeria leaf disease stress. Onyemaechi O.H. Obiazikwor reports biological products modulating the microbiome and preconditioning field soil to suppress root-knot nematode infestation in tomato crops. Md Asad Uz Zaman examines Phytophthora cinnamomi influence on the rhizosphere microbiome in orchard-grown Reed avocado in Western Australia. Levente Kiss closes with mycoparasites of fungal plant pathogens. You learn to ask where the microbe lives and what it changes, not only which species is present. The speaker line-up and themes helps you place these authors alongside keynote speakers on collections and climate.

Biosecurity seen from Malaysia to South Papua

The Biosecurity session with a global perspective widens the map. You move from disease aetiology of mealybug wilt of MD2 pineapple cultivar in Malaysia from Intan Sakinah Mohd Anuar, to efficacy of systemic and biological fungicides against coffee leaf rust in Hawaii from Zhiqiang Cheng, to integrated pest management practices in Semangga District, Merauke Regency, South Papua Province from Amelia A. Limbongan. Then Sophia E. Callaghan discusses the role of international culture collections and plant disease herbaria in development assistance projects, with a case study in Laos supported by the Crawford Fund. Susheela Katukuri addresses risk assessment of mango malformation disease in Australia, and Kerry R. Everett estimates incursion risk by the grape pathogen Guignardia bidwellii using Bayesian networks. If you work in quarantine or extension, you see how local fieldwork and international holdings support each other.

Lunch posters put diagnostics and resistance on display

Lunch and posters centres on odd poster numbers. You can walk the rows and compare methods rather than crops alone. Posters include homeodomain locus as strain-specific diagnostic for Ceratobasidium theobromae in cocoa from Jacob Downs, seedborne mycobiota in the revitalized Australian sesame industry from Dante L. Adorada, grey mould contamination of wine grapes based on ergosterol analysis and Botrytis antigens from Christopher C. Steel, hull rot detection in almonds with high-resolution proximal imaging and artificial intelligence from Tonya Wiechel, fungicide resistance monitoring in Australian vineyards from Ismail Ahmed Ismail, and diversity of Colletotrichum species infecting Australian native plants with insights from state culture collections from Aindreeya Alcova. Other posters cover Karnal bunt surveillance systems for Australia, detection of Xylella fastidiosa in New Zealand indigenous plant collections held overseas by metagenomics, RNA biopesticides for crops and native plants, and timing of walnut blight infection in a semi-arid climate. The Tuesday page does not publish session start times.

Open data, diversity and a room talking about collections

Keynote 5 returns you to infrastructure after lunch. Dr Erin Roger speaks on how an open-data research infrastructure can support data-driven biosecurity initiatives. The afternoon concurrent program then tests that idea from several sides. Novel approaches 1, with spotlight speaker Dr Laura Mugnai on challenges in European and Italian viticulture for management of grapevine diseases, adds sterol dependency in Phytophthora cinnamomi, silicon-induced resistance to Ascochyta blight in lentil, RNA interference protection against Botrytis cinerea in chickpea, and root exudate chemical ecology for powdery scab management. Diversity covers clubroot diversity across Australia leveraging herbarium collections, genomic diversity of Septoria tritici, formae speciales of Fusarium oxysporum in processing tomatoes, Rose Rosette Virus isolates in Oklahoma, Fusarium oxysporum in pyrethrum, Colletotrichum in native plants, and Stagonosporopsis and Didymella tanaceti in pyrethrum. Pathogenicity 2 covers cotton pathogens, Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici virulence, glasshouse phenotyping for common root rot in wheat and barley, bacterial spot on almond leaves, and Didymella tanaceti infection in pyrethrum. Biosecurity Collections closes with a workshop hosted by Mike Hodda on what collections do and what users want collections to do, plus talks on harnessing reference collections, fungal and bacterial collections for biosecurity, and combining surveillance, diagnostics and collections to demonstrate pest area freedom. Check the herbarium taxonomy guide and write down one specimen, one sequence record and one surveillance contact you will verify this month.