Breeding poplars with durable resistance to Melampsora larici-populina leaf rust: a multidisciplinary approach to understand and delay pathogen adaptation

During the last decades, European poplar breeders learned the hard way that Melampsora larici-populina (commonly abbreviated as Mlp…) has an impressive adaptive potential (McDonald and Linde 2002). This fungal pathogen defeated all the deployed cultivars carrying qualitative (i.e., complete) resistances inherited from the American eastern black cottonwood Populus deltoides Bartram ex Marsh. in less time than needed to grow a poplar tree