About a fifth of the global wheat production is lost to pathogens and pests each year. Of particular importance are fungal pathogens belonging to the genus Puccinia, the causal agents of the devastating rust diseases. Despite the planting of elite cultivars and improved disease management practices, rust epidemics have become more severe over the past two decades, which is mostly attributed to the emergence and rapid spread of new and highly virulent pathogen races. Although hundreds of disease resistance genes have been genetically characterized in the wheat gene pool, only a handful of them have been cloned. The large and repeat-rich genome of wheat has represented a major hurdle for the rapid and efficient cloning of disease resistance genes. A major focus of our research is on the development and use of novel genomic approaches that allow for a more rapid and cost-effective cloning of rust resistance genes in wheat. In particular, we are interested in elucidating the molecular bases of durable rust resistance.
Prof. Simon Krattinger obtained his PhD in 2009 from the University of Zurich, Switzerland. After spending three years as a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow at CSIRO Plant Industries in Canberra, Australia, he became an independent group leader at the University of Zurich supported by an Ambizione early career grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation. In 2017, he joined the Center for Desert Agriculture at KAUST as an Assistant Professor.