fusarium

[fyoo-zair-ee-uhm]

noun

plural

fusaria 

1. any fungus of the genus Fusarium, occurring primarily in temperate regions and causing a variety of diseases in plants and animals, producing in humans a loss of fingernails and sometimes blindness.

Word History and Origins

Origin of fusarium¹

< New Latin (1832), equivalent to Latin fūs ( us ) spindle + -ārium -ary

Example Sentences

The fusarium wilt fungus was born in California; it goes after vulnerable palms.

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The scientists confirm the presence of genetically differentiated lineages with different host-specificity for arabica and robusta coffee and show that the fungal pathogen F. xylarioides repeatedly took up "horizontally transferred" segments of DNA from a related fungal Fusarium taxa which contributed to successive outbreaks of the disease.

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Dr Peck also said that multiple transfers into F. xylarioides populations matched different parts of the Fusarium oxysporum mobile pathogenicity chromosome and were enriched in effector genes and transposons.

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"The fact that horizontal gene transfers between two different species of Fusarium contributed to the repeated emergence of coffee wilt disease is a key mechanism to understand what is happening more widely in fungi -- to what extent, we just do not know," he said.

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They add that knowledge of horizontal transfer mechanisms and putative donor taxa might help to design future intercropping strategies that minimize the risk of transfer of effector genes between closely related Fusarium taxa.

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