In a race to prevent and control rust disease epidemics, scientists have positioned themselves to better understand how rust fungi infect crops and evolve virulence. After using the latest genome sequencing technologies to understand how rust fungi adapt to overcome resistance in crop varieties, scientists from the University of Minnesota, the USDA-ARS Cereal Disease Laboratory, the Australian National University, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and the University of Sydney are releasing results with two publications in mBio, a journal by the American Society of Microbiology.