Frosty pod rot by Moniliophthora roreri, external fruit symptoms & sporulation [Image credit: Brantlee Spakes Richter, used under the CC BY-NC 3.0 US]

The Moniliophthora roreri MCA 2997 genome sequence and gene models were not determined by the Joint Genome Institute (JGI), but were downloaded from NCBI on Nov 10, 2020. In order to ensure this genome is comparable to those sequenced by the JGI, we applied filters to remove if present: 1) transposable elements, 2) pseudogenes, 3) alternative transcripts and overlapping models, 4) alleles on secondary scaffolds and 5) unsupported short models. This resulted in the removal of 2495 models from Moniliophthora roreri MCA 2997 and the generation of the FilteredModels1 gene track. All published models are available in the ExternalModels track. Please note that this copy of the genome is not maintained by NCBI and is therefore not automatically updated. In order to allow comparative analyses with other fungal genomes sequenced by the JGI, a copy of this genome is incorporated into MycoCosm. The JGI Annotation Pipeline was used to add functional annotation to this genome.

The text below is adapted from Meinhardt et al., 2014.

Moniliophthora roreri (Cif.) H.C. Evans, Stalpers, Samson & Benny causes Frosty Pod Rot, a devastating pod disease of Theobroma cacao L. (cacao), the source of cocoa powder and cocoa butter. Phylogenetically, M. roreri is related to another fungal pathogen, Moniliophthora perniciosa (Stahel) Aime and Phillips-Mora, which causes Witches’ Broom Disease, a disease that infects all cacao meristematic tissues including flowers, shoots, and pods. Together, these pathogens cause two of the most economically important diseases of Theobroma cacao in the Western Hemisphere. While both of these fungal species are pathogenic on the plant genera Theobroma and Herrania, M. roreri is not known to have any other hosts, whereas M. perniciosa has distinct biotypes that infect different host species. Historically, these Moniliophthora pathogens have spread independently to cacao producing areas across the Western Hemisphere and they have typically resulted in production losses of 75% or higher in nearly all the cacao growing regions in the Americas.