A comprehensive pipeline for the transcriptome analysis of Puccinia kuehnii, the sugarcane orange rust fungal pathogen, provides insights into the early and late molecular responses during compatible and incompatible host interactions
Puccinia kuehnii, the causal agent of orange rust, has caused significant losses to the sugarcane crop in Florida since 2007. During plant infection, rust fungi deliver effector proteins into host tissues to promote parasitic growth while plants activate their immune systems to respond to this invasion. The main goal of this research was to analyze the transcriptome of P. kuehnii during time-course infections of sugarcane, including compatible and incompatible interactions.