Mycopathologia 129: 127, 1995. 127

Editorial

The European Fusarium sambucinum project

The genus Fusarium contains species which play a great role in man's activities. Fusarium species destroy our crops, rot our harvests, poison our food, infect our bodies and cause disease in our livestock. The economic loss due to these fungi is almost impossible to estimate and justifies a concerted research effort in the applied fields of crop protection, post-harvest biology and antifungal therapy.

But, the genus Fusarium is not easy to work with. Isolates have few morphological features, which are often highly variable in culture and have multiple spore-producing forms. Coupled with a relatively rapid rate of mutation, frequent degeneration in culture, and a variety of non-sexual and sexual mechanisms for generating variation, identification poses many problems to the inexperienced and experienced worker alike. Research in areas of basic mycology such as systematics has lagged behind research in applied areas. Yet, understanding the biology of an organism is essential if its potential is to be exploited.

This volume reports some of the results from the European Fusarium sambucinum project. It goes some way towards redressing the balance between pure and applied mycology by demonstrating how the application of new techniques can help to solve apparently intractable problems in this difficult, complex and, sometimes, systematically controversial genus. New initiatives in the traditional area of morphological research, such as computer-aided identification, and the modem techniques used by molecular biologists, such as analysis of riboso- mal RNA sequences and fingerprinting with the polymerase chain reaction have provided new insights to species relationships. Physiological and chemical characterization is a powerful tool that will help diagnostic laboratories produce more reliable identifications. Papers dealing with sexual fertility and vegetative incompatibility explore the mechanisms that generate and delimit genetic variation in natural populations.

Systematics provides the information system which underpins all biological sciences, and is advancing both rapidly and with a degree of objectivity previously thought unobtainable. It is hoped that workers in related and applied areas will read some of these papers and gain a deeper appreciation of what is happening in systematics and how this will inevitably affect their own work.

Geoffrey Hall International Mycological Institute Egham, U.K.