Symptoms of Southern corn leaf blight and stalk rot (Bipolaris maydis, also known as Cochliobolus heterostrophus). Image Credit: Craig Grau, via Bugwood.org used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License.

The genome assembly and gene models of Cochliobolus heterostrophus Hm540 were not determined by the Joint Genome Institute (JGI), but provided by Bradford Condon and B. Gillian Turgeon on May 12, 2021. 114 potential pseudogenes were removed from the original databaset because they showed internal stop codons. Please note that this copy of the genome is not maintained by the authors and is therefore not automatically updated. The JGI Annotation Pipeline was used to add additional functional annotation to the author's assembly and proteins.

Cochliobolus heterostrophus strain Hm540 is a MAT1-1 field isolate, collected by Kurt Leonard in Franklin Co., NC  August 1972.  Like the reference Cochliobolus heterostrophus strain C5, it is a race O, non T-toxin producing strain. Before the Southern Corn Leaf epidemic of 1970, C. heterostrophus was known as an endemic pathogen of minor economic importance, first described in 1925 by Dreschler. After the appearance of race T, this race was named “race O”. Note both fungal races are pathogenic to corn, but race T is highly and specifically virulent on Texas male sterile cytoplasm (Tcms) corn.

References:

• Drechsler, C. 1925. Leaf spot of maize caused by Ophiobolus heterostrophus, the ascigerous stage of a Helminthosporium exhibiting bipolar germination. J. Agric. Res. 31: 701-726.