Robigalia Roundup LXXXVIII: FAO wants forestry institutions to apply as official Reference Centres

Hello {{first_name | Robigalia readers}},

This edition turned out to be accidentally forest-themed.

The Paper of the Week covers invasive tree pathogens across the Southern Hemisphere, the Pathogen of the Week is Phytophthora ramorum, and now this opportunity landed in the mix too.

The FAO is calling for institutions to apply as Reference Centres for Forestry, a designation that formalises collaboration between an institution and the Organization on forest-related work.

Forest pest and disease is explicitly listed among the thematic areas, alongside agroforestry, forest genetic resources, and climate resilience, so this is squarely relevant if your work sits in tree health or forest pathology.

Designated centres get named association with FAO, access to its technical and policy networks, and the ability to pursue joint activities and resource mobilisation with the Organization. In return, FAO expects at least two years of prior collaboration with them, demonstrated expertise in the relevant field, and a willingness to contribute institutional resources, since FAO itself doesn't fund the centres. The designation runs for up to five years and can be renewed.

Applications need a completed template and Declaration of Interest, sent to [email protected]. National institutions also need a letter of support from the relevant government authority. The deadline is 31 July 2026.

Now, onto this week’s edition:

Let’s dive in!

This week's Paper of the Week is a little different. Rather than a primary research article, I've chosen a review, and I've chosen it for a personal reason. My own PhD research was on myrtle rust (Austropuccinia psidii), the pathogen at the centre of one of this review's central case studies.

A paper by Burgess and Wingfield, published in Annual Review of Phytopathology, examines why invasive tree pathogens are emerging as an escalating threat to Southern Hemisphere forests, drawing on more than a century of Northern Hemisphere disease history to frame the risk.

The review synthesises documented forest pathogen invasions across both hemispheres, compiling two extensive tables covering epidemics in native forests and in plantations, and works through two detailed case studies to illustrate how quickly an invasive fungal pathogen can reshape a forest ecosystem.

The first is myrtle rust itself. Native to South and Central America, A. psidii has spread to the United States, the Caribbean, Hawaiʻi, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand since the late twentieth century. In Australia alone, more than 380 native Myrtaceae species are now susceptible, and at least 15 face extinction risk. Notably, the globally dominant "epidemic strain" does not infect Eucalyptus, meaning its spread has been driven by a generalist lineage attacking other myrtles rather than by plantation forestry, while separate lineages in South America remain capable of infecting Eucalyptus and pose a further threat if they spread.

The second is Rapid ʻŌhiʻa Death, caused by two unrelated Ceratocystis species first detected on Hawaiʻi Island in 2014. One causes rapid wilt, the other slower canker decline, and together they have killed more than a million ʻōhiʻa trees (Metrosideros polymorpha), a keystone species covering roughly 80% of Hawaiian native forest cover.

Both cases underline the review's broader argument. Southern Hemisphere floras are novel and highly endemic, so when invasive pathogens do arrive, the consequences are often disproportionate. The authors call for risk-optimised surveillance, stronger phytosanitary enforcement, and internationally coordinated breeding programs, arguing that reactive, case-by-case management is no longer adequate.

When tanoaks began dying along California's fog belt in the mid-1990s, foresters called the mystery killer sudden oak death. Fifteen years later the same organism turned up an ocean away, felling Japanese larch plantations across the wetter reaches of Britain, a host jump wide enough to surprise specialists who had been tracking it for years.

Phytophthora ramorum belongs to the kingdom Stramenopila, alongside the golden brown algae and diatoms. It is heterothallic, producing asexual sporangia and chlamydospores freely, while sexual oospores have rarely if ever been observed in nurseries even where both mating types occur together. Growth peaks around 20 degrees Celsius, and spores disperse in splashing and wind driven rain, which explains why the disease thrives in cool, damp coastal climates.

Coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia) and tanoak (Notholithocarpus densiflorus) suffer the disease's namesake symptom, bleeding trunk cankers that girdle the stem and can kill a mature tree within weeks. On more than 150 other plant species, including rhododendron, viburnum and camellia, the pathogen instead produces a milder foliar disease called ramorum blight, and California bay laurel (Umbellularia californica) plays an outsized role in amplifying spores that then spill over onto nearby oaks.

Phytophthora ramorum is now established across coastal California and Oregon and throughout the UK and parts of continental Europe, where it was first detected in 2002 on an imported viburnum before spreading into Japanese larch forests. In England and Wales alone, the public value at risk from gardens and woodland has been estimated at £1.4 billion a year.

As with all Phytophthora species, there is no cure. Phosphonate treatments can suppress symptoms in high value ornamentals and urban trees for around eighteen months, but forest management still relies on identifying and felling infected larch before it sporulates, backed by strict movement licensing to slow spread through the nursery trade.

That same genus, and the same question of how Phytophthora reshapes forest ecosystems, sits at the heart of this week's Plant Pathologist of the Week, whose doctoral research traced the decline of Mediterranean evergreen oaks back to invasive Phytophthora species in the soil.

This week, we meet Wajid Aurangzeb, who completed his PhD at the University of Tuscia in Italy and has since built a career studying how soilborne pathogens interact with plant associated microbial communities to shape disease dynamics across forest ecosystems.

At Tuscia, Wajid worked on the decline of Mediterranean evergreen oaks associated with invasive Phytophthora species. The work spanned large scale forest surveys, mesocosm experiments and high throughput sequencing to characterise soil microbial communities, alongside an assessment of how management interventions such as biofumigation and phosphite treatment altered soil and rhizosphere microbiomes.

Following his PhD, Wajid moved into a postdoctoral position in forest pathology, where he built on that foundation, taking on pathogen monitoring, molecular diagnostics and the quantitative analysis of large ecological datasets, work that pushed him to operate fluently across field, laboratory and data driven research.

That combination has fed into peer-reviewed publications on Phytophthora diversity and disease management in Mediterranean forests. Wajid is particularly drawn to research that pairs molecular tools with ecological theory, and he counts his work connecting pathogen biology to microbiome responses among his proudest contributions, a move away from single pathogen thinking towards a system level understanding of disease.

His advice to fellow plant pathologists centres on interdisciplinary range. As the field draws more heavily on both molecular and ecological data, he sees the ability to pair strong experimental design with rigorous data analysis as increasingly essential to tackling complex plant health problems.

Wajid is currently seeking postdoctoral positions and collaborative research opportunities where he can keep developing this intersection of plant pathology and microbial ecology. You can find him on ResearchGate, LinkedIn or Instagram.

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See you next Monday!

P.S. Why Robigalia? The name originates from the Ancient Roman festival dedicated to crop protection. You can read all about the history here: