Darkera picea CBS 138576 growing on a plate. Photo credit: Jérôme Collemare

The Leotiomycetes class comprises major plant pathogens, including Blumeria graminis and Botrytis cinerea. Most orders and families in this class have been sequenced, but a few gaps remain, preventing the full understanding of the evolution of Leotiomycetes. The type strain of Darkera picea Crous & M.M. Müll. (2015) belongs to the poorly studied family Phacidiaceae in the Phacidiales order (Crous et al., 2015). This strain was isolated from needles of Picea abies (European spruce) in Tuusula, Finland. The genome of this species will be useful to study the evolution of plant pathogenicity within Leotiomycetes. Major plant pathogens in this class use chemical weapons to infect a wide range of plant hosts. It is expected that pathogenicity on European spruce also relies on the production of toxic secondary metabolites, which can be discovered with comparative genomics.