Lectures
• Introduction to the course, teaching methods and assessment methods.
• The concept of plant disease
• Fungal diseases
• establishing infection (suitable host, germination process, penetration
methods, germ tube elongation, appressorial development, cell-wall degrading enzymes)
• development of disease (overcoming host barriers, establishing infection,
CWDE, role of toxins, biotrophy, leaf senescence)
• genetics (concept of race structures, avirulence genes, fungicide resistance, genetic variation in fungi, mating-type genes, horizontal transfer and transposable elements, role of mitochondrial DNA)

• Molecular biology in plant pathology (model organisms, transformation techniques, forward and reverse genetics, dissection of signalling pathways, gene expression profiling, proteomics, metabolite profiling, bioinformatics)
• Resistance mechanisms in plants (preformed and induced defences, resistance genes, signalling in plant disease resistance mechanisms)
• The control of plant diseases (breeding for resistance, use of chemicals, chemicals that elicit defence responses in plants, transgenic approaches for crop protection)
• Molecular Diagnostics (classical approaches, electrophoresis, immunoassays, nucleic acid-based techniques)