Slow and temperature-mediated pathogen adaptation to a non-specific fungicide in agricultural ecosystem

The spread of antimicrobial resistance and global change in air temperature represent two major phenomena that are exerting a disastrous impact on natural and social issues but investigation of the interaction between these phenomena in an evolutionary context is limited. In this study, a statistical genetic approach was used to investigate the evolution of antimicrobial resistance in agricultural ecosystem and its association with local air temperature. We found no resistance to mancozeb, a non-specific fungicide widely used in agriculture for more than half a century, in 215 Alternaria alternata isolates sampled from geographic locations along a climatic gradient and cropping system representing diverse ecotypes in China, consistent with low resistance risk in many non-specific fungicides. Genetic variance accounts for ~35% of phenotypic variation while genotype-environment interaction is negligible, suggesting that heritability plays a more important role in the evolution of resistan...