What is Phytophthora?
Phytophthora is an oomycete plant pathogen infecting a wide range of hosts such as eggplant, cucumber, watermelon, pumpkin, squash, cocoa, coconut, arecanut, cardamom, black pepper, rubber etc. Oomycetes are a group of organisms related to diatoms and brown algae. These plant pathogens cause crop loss to the tune of several crores of rupees every year. Whole genome sequencing helps in understanding of the molecular basis of pathogenicity and host specificity by assisting the isolation of novel virulence and avirulence genes, as well as by helping to identify targets for chemical control.

About sequencing the project
The study of oomycetes has reached new height with the completion of the genome sequence drafts of three Phytophthora species viz. P. infestans, P. ramorum and P. sojae has now been completed and is in progress for five more species such as P. andina, P. capsici, P. ipomoeae, P. mirabilis, and P. phaseoli. The Indian initiative of sequencing Phytophthora was taken up as part of the Outreach Project on Phytophthora, Fusarium, and Ralstonia, funded by Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). For this, a native isolate of Phytophthora, (Is. No. 98-93) infecting black pepper was completely sequenced at The centre for Genomic Application(TCGA) using next generation sequencing platform, Illumina - Solexa GA II. The sequence data was assembled by taking Joint Genome Institute’s P. capsici as reference genome with ~ 87.53 % coverage. A summary of results obtained is given in the table.