Sydney as the Meeting Place

You can see how Tuesday, 27 May is organised at the Australasian Plant Pathology Society Conference 2025 and how you can follow the programme from citrus pathology through collections and climate to open data. The Tuesday page lists lectures, keynotes, concurrent sessions, breaks, and a long poster session for that day, with links to Monday, 26 May and Wednesday, 28 May.

The details cited in this entry were checked on full Tuesday details for 27 May.

What does Tuesday, 27 May hold for the week?

You see three day labels at the top of the listing: Monday, 26 May; Tuesday, 27 May; and Wednesday, 28 May. Tuesday sits in the middle of that sequence and includes a full programme of talks from morning lectures to afternoon concurrent sessions. The page also offers Search and Speakers entries so you can search by name or topic. The Tuesday page does not publish transport or venue maps. You can use the day order to place each talk: morning lectures first, then mid-morning keynotes, then concurrent tracks, then lunch and posters, then a late keynote and afternoon concurrent tracks.

Why does citrus open the day?

The first named block is the Daniel McAlpine Lecture with Dr Nerida Donovan. The listed talk is Citrus pathology in Australia, past, present and future, by Nerida Donovan. If you work with citrus or teach citrus diseases, you can start here because the title frames past records, current problems, and next questions in one place. Note the spelling of the lecture name and the speaker name as listed, and keep them together in your notes. For broader context on the meeting, see the program at a glance and keep Tuesday as your reference point for this lecture.

How do reference collections support biosecurity?

After the opening lecture, the page lists Keynote 3 on scientific reference collections. The speaker is Dr Susie Collins and the talk is Scientific reference collections, critical in underpinning Australia's biosecurity, by Susie Collins. You are asked to think about collections as working tools behind biosecurity rather than just storage. The next keynote keeps the same thread. Keynote 4 is Fungal collections assist in rapid identification of unusual samples to support biosecurity, by Dr Megan Romberg. If you identify fungi or submit unusual samples, you can read these two keynotes as a pair: one explains why reference collections matter for the country, the other explains how fungal collections help with rapid identification when an unusual sample arrives. A morning tea break separates the keynotes from the next talks.

What links big data, climate, and spores?

The morning concurrent track named Big Data, Monitoring and Climate lists Spotlight Speaker Prof Jan Leach. The listed talks are Building resilience: Managing plant disease in a changing climate by Jan E. Leach; Monitoring spore release by Phlyctema vagabunda in apple orchards by Kerry R. Everett; Insights on grapevine trunk disease pathogen spore deposits on pruning wounds by Tarita Furlan; Environmental conditions and Fruit Phenology modulate Phomopsis Husk Rot Development in Macadamia by Vivian A. Rincon-Florez; and Climatic suitability for the establishment of Ceratocystis species in Pacific countries by HASNA LUNA. You can trace a clear line here from climate pressure to field measurement. One talk sets the climate frame, three talks track spores, deposits, or rot development in apple, grapevine, and macadamia, and one talk looks at suitability for Ceratocystis species in Pacific countries. If you scout orchards or vineyards, pay attention to the methods for spore release and wound deposits because they connect weather data to practical action in the orchard.

Which interactions shape disease in the field?

Three concurrent tracks share the Interactions label with different angles. The Disease Complex track lists Inter- and intra-pathogen interactions deriving from co-infection with different fungal and viral strains in canola cultivars with distinct host resistances by Nuraizat Abidin, Oomycetes and nectriaceous fungi associated with avocado root rot in Australia by Jacob Jose, In-fighting among Curtobacterium flaccumfaciens pv. flaccumfaciens isolates during tan spot infections of mung bean by Noel L Knight, Fungal communities associated with myrtle rust infection and the use of mycoparasite(s) as potential biocontrol agents against the disease by Dan CU, Competing for dominance: the subtropical race 4 vs. race 1 Fusarium wilt challenge in banana by Janet M Roberts, and Fungi in the Botryosphaeriales associated with mango dieback in the Northern Territory by Birendra BK Kunwar. The Microbiome track moves from rhizosphere to phyllosphere, with talks on Maire Tawake, eucalyptus leaf disease, root-knot nematode in tomato, and Phytophthora cinnamomi in Western Australian avocado. You can find full Tuesday details for 27 May in the day listing if you want to match each title to its author. The Pathogenicity 2 track adds cotton pathogens, Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici work, root rot screening in wheat and barley, bacterial spot on almond leaves, and Didymella tanaceti work in pyrethrum.

Where does the global view fit?

The Biosecurity, Global Perspective track widens the lens beyond Australia. It lists Disease Etiology of Mealybug Wilt of MD2 Pineapple Cultivar in Malaysia by INTAN SAKINAH MOHD ANUAR, Efficacies of various systemic and biological fungicides against coffee leaf rust (Hemileia vastatrix) in Hawaii by Zhiqiang Cheng, Assessing Integrated Pest Management Practices in Semangga District, Merauke Regency, South Papua Province by Amelia A Limbongan, Role of International Culture Collections and Plant Disease Herbaria in Development Assistance Projects. Case Study in Laos supported by the Crawford Fund. by Sophia E Callaghan, and Challenges associated with the risk assessment of mango malformation disease in Australia by Susheela Katukuri. If you advise growers, you can compare pineapple, coffee, mango, and mixed cropping cases side by side. The Laos case study links culture collections and herbaria to development assistance, which ties back to the morning keynotes on collections. For related reading on names and preserved specimens, see the biosecurity collections hub on this site.

What did lunch and posters cover?

The page marks Lunch and Posters with odd-numbered posters presented at this session. The poster list is long and spans diagnostics, resistance, and field monitoring, from a strain-specific diagnostic for Ceratobasidium theobromae in cocoa by Jacob Downs to Xylella fastidiosa detection by Sandra B. Visnovsky, with work in between on grey mould in wine grapes, hull rot in almonds, fungicide resistance in vineyards, downy mildew in New Zealand cocksfoot, seed potato certification and collection data for pathologists. Hosts range from cocoa and sesame to kauri, pyrethrum, and date palm. If you attend with students, ask them to pick three posters in their crop and note method, host, and pathogen.

How can open data help biosecurity decisions?

After lunch the page lists Keynote 5: How can an open data research infrastructure support data-driven biosecurity initiatives, by Dr Erin Roger. You can read this as the data counterpart to the collections keynotes. Where the morning talks explain physical reference collections, this talk asks how open data systems can support biosecurity work. An afternoon tea break follows. If you manage surveillance or diagnostics records, note the wording of the title: it frames infrastructure as support for decisions, not as an end in itself.

What closes the afternoon?

The afternoon concurrent tracks are Novel approaches 1, Diversity, Interactions, Pathogenicity 2, and Biosecurity Collections. Novel approaches 1 lists Spotlight Speaker Dr Laura Mugnai with Challenges in European and Italian viticulture for management of grapevine diseases by Laura Mugnai, as well as sterol work in Phytophthora cinnamomi by Aayushree Kharel, silicon resistance work in lentil by Navya Beera, RNA interference protection work against Botrytis cinerea in chickpea by Prabhakaran Sambasivam, and root exudate work for powdery scab by Thi Thanh Hien Nguyen. Diversity lists clubroot work using herbarium collections by Maxim Prokchorchik, Septoria tritici work by Atika Morrell, Fusarium oxysporum work in processing tomatoes by Hanyue Feng, rose rosette virus work in Oklahoma by Akhtar Ali, Fusarium oxysporum work in pyrethrum by Yuzhu Liu, Colletotrichum diversity in native plants by Aindreeya Alcova, and Stagonosporopsis tanaceti and Didymella tanaceti genetics by Pooja Rajasri Poosarla. Biosecurity Collections lists From Archive to Action: Harnessing Plant Pathogen Reference Collections for Research by Reannon L. Smith, New or not new, the importance of fungal and bacterial collections for biosecurity by Merje Toome, Combining surveillance, diagnostics, and collections to demonstrate pest area freedom by Angus J Carnegie, and a collections workshop hosted by Mike Hodda on what collections do and what users want collections to do, with a feedback form at the listed link. Select the Tuesday titles that match your hosts and keep them alongside your field diary for the next inspection.