Confirmation of Oat Crown Rust Disease in Taiwan

Oat is a minor forage crop grown in Taiwan. Only a few historical records of oat rust disease have been reported in the country. Therefore, the pathogen population remains poorly characterized. A rust-like disease outbreak was detected at the Experimental Farm of National Taiwan University in 2019, which caused significant damage to field experiments. To determine the identity of the pathogen responsible for this disease outbreak, we collected infected foliar material. Disease signs suggested infection by the oat crown rust fungus. Hence, common procedures in rust pathology were applied to confirm the identity of the pathogen with phenotypic and molecular diagnostic techniques. A total of 50 field pathogen samples from infected oat cultivars were collected in 2019, and 5 single-pustule rust isolates were obtained in 2020 and 2021. These isolates were initially identified as <i>Puccinia coronata</i> var. <i>avenae</i> f. sp. <i>avenae</i> (<i>Pca</i>) based on the phylogenetic analysis of nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer sequence data. This identification was subsequently confirmed through whole-genome phylogeny, which showed that the representative Taiwanese isolate NTU1 clustered with other <i>Pca</i> representative strains in Basidiomycota. Phenotyping assays across 36 oat differential lines demonstrated that Taiwanese isolates are phenotypically similar with relatively low virulence. This study presents the first molecular confirmation of <i>Pca</i> in Taiwan and reports the virulence profiles of the Taiwanese <i>Pca</i> population.[Formula: see text] Copyright © 2025 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.