This chapter reviews the morphological characteristics (uredinia, urediniospores, telia, teliospores, basidiospores and spermogonia, and aeciospores), life cycle, overwintering, and host range of Melampsora rusts on Salix species, and presents tabulated data on the morphological characteristics of 35 species/forms of Melampsora spp. on Salix.

This chapter provides information on S. filum, particularly on its taxonomy, nomenclature, morphology (anamorph and teleomorph), natural occurrence, life cycle in willow plantations, pathogenicity on rusts, mode of action, storage, growth and sporulation on media, incubation period, survival on plant surface, spread in plantations, and potential for the biological control of rust in willow coppice plantations.

This chapter describes the morphology (i.e. uredinia, urediniospores, telia, teliospores, basidiospores, spermagonia, aecia and aeciospores), host range, geographical distribution, and spread of Melampsora spp. on Populus. Interspecific hybridization in these Melampsora species is briefly covered.

This chapter discusses the relationships between inoculum density and uredinial number/area using the data obtained with poplar rust (Melampsora larici-populina) and willow rust (M. larici-epitea). A method for disease scoring in leaf disc inoculations using slope factors calculated based on the uredinial pustule area and inoculum density is described.

The main aim of the work is to study the regulation of gene expression in the interaction between rice and Magnaporthe oryzae by gene chip technology. In this study, we mainly focused on changes of gene expression at 24, 48, and 72 hours post-inoculation (hpi), through which we could conduct a more comprehensive analysis of rice blast-related genes in the process of infection. The results showed that the experimental groups contained 460, 1227, and 3937 significant differentially expressed genes at 24, 48, and 72 hpi, respectively. Furthermore, 115 significantly differentially expressed genes were identified in response to rice blast infection at all three time points. By annotating these 115 genes, they were divided into three categories: metabolic pathways, proteins or enzymes, and organelle components. As expected, many of these genes were known rice blast-related genes; however, we discovered new genes with high fold changes. Most of them encoded conserved hypothetical proteins, and some were hypothetically conserved genes. Our study may contribute to finding new resistance genes and understanding the mechanism of rice blast development.