Skirmish or war: the emergence of agricultural plant pathogens

Understanding the ecological and evolutionary processes underlying the emergence of infectious disease is critically important in guiding prevention, management and breeding strategies. Novel pathogen lineages may arise within agricultural environments, wild hosts or from non-host associated disease reservoirs. Although the source of most disease outbreaks remains unknown, environmental and zoonotic origins are frequently identified in mammalian pathosystems and expanded sampling of plant pathosystems reveals important links with wild populations. This review describes key ecological and evolutionary processes underlying disease emergence, with particular emphasis on shifts from wild reservoirs to cultivated hosts and genetic mechanisms driving host adaption subsequent to emergence.