bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/215418; this version posted November 7, 2017. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY 4.0 International license. The evolutionary history of the current global Ramularia collo-cygni epidemic Remco Stam1§, Hind Sghyer1*, Martin Münsterkötter4,5*, Saurabh Pophaly2%, Aurélien Tellier2,Ulrich Güldener3, Ralph Hückelhoven1, Michael Hess1§ 1Chair of Phytopathology, 2Section of Population Genetics, 3 Chair of Genome-oriented Bioinformatics Center of Life and Food Sciences Weihenstephan, Technische Universität München, Germany 4Functional Genomics and Bioinformatics, University of Sopron, Hungary 5Institute of Bioinformatics and Systems Biology, Helmholtz Zentrum München, Germany * contributed equally to this work § correspondence: Remco Stam:
[email protected] Michael Hess: m.hess@ tum .de % current address: Department of Evolutionary Biology, Evolutionary Biology Centre, Uppsala University, Sweden & Division of Evolutionary Biology, Faculty of Biology II, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany Abstract Ramularia Leaf Spot (RLS) has emerged as a threat for barley production in many regions of the world. Late appearance of unspecific symptoms caused that Ramularia collo-cygni could only by molecular diagnostics be detected as the causal agent of RLS. Although recent research has shed more light on the biology and genomics of the pathogen, the cause of the recent global spread remains unclear. To address urgent questions, especially on the emergence to a major disease, life-cycle, transmission, and quick adaptation to control measures, we de-novo sequenced the genome of R.