The biotroph-necrotroph-hemibiotroph division for classification of the trophic phenotypes of fungal plant-pathogens has been extremely useful, but also has a few issues. We have just published a predictor of trophic phenotype called CATAStrophy, which is available for download here and is also part of a recent special issue on “bioinformatics applications in plant pathology” in Frontiers in Microbiology.

CATAStrophy uses CAZyme gene content as the basis for its predictions. We have created novel trophic classes more in line with the CAZyme-based dataset that we use for prediction, but conceptially these are roughly equivalent to the traditional trophic terms as shown below: