‘hagis’, an R Package Resource for Pathotype Analysis of _Phytophthora sojae_ Populations Causing Stem and Root Rot of Soybean

In hagis: Analysis of Plant Pathogen Pathotype Complexities, Distributions and Diversity

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title: "‘hagis’, an R Package Resource for Pathotype Analysis of Phytophthora sojae Populations Causing Stem and Root Rot of Soybean" author: - Austin G. McCoy: email: [e-mail] institute: MSU correspondence: true equal_contributor: true - name: Zachary Noel institute: MSU equal_contributor: true - name: Adam H. Sparks institute: USQ equal_contributor: true - name: Martin Chilvers institute: [MSU, ECO] institute: - MSU: Department of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA - USQ: University of Southern Queensland, Centre for Crop Health, Toowoomba, Qld 4350, Australia - ECO: Program in Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, and Behavior, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA date: "r format(Sys.time(), '%d %B, %Y')" output: bookdown::word_document2: toc: no pandoc_args: - '--lua-filter=scholarly-metadata.lua' - '--lua-filter=author-info-blocks.lua' reference_docx: "template.docx" csl: "molecular-plant-microbe-interactions.csl" bibliography: references.bib abstract: | Phytophthora sojae is a significant pathogen of soybean worldwide. Pathotype surveys for Phytophthora sojae are conducted to monitor resistance gene efficacy and determine if new resistance genes are needed. Valuable measurements for pathotype analysis include the distribution of susceptible reactions, pathotype complexity, pathotype frequency, and diversity indices for pathotype distributions. Previously the Habgood-Gilmour Spreadsheet (HaGiS), written in Microsoft® Excel, was used for data analysis. However, the growing popularity of the R programming language in plant pathology and desire for reproducible research made HaGiS a prime candidate for conversion into an R package. Here we report on the development and use of an R package, ‘hagis’, that can be used to produce all outputs from the HaGiS Excel sheet for P. sojae or other gene-for-gene pathosystem studies.

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knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = FALSE)
library(hagis)
library(pander)

R Package Announcement

Uniform and healthy stand establishment is essential to maximizing soybean (Glycine max) yield. Oomycetes such as Phytophthora sojae constitute a significant threat to stand establishment and yield. Phytophthora sojae has been managed primarily via deployment of single resistance genes in commercial soybean cultivars, which interact with P. sojae Avr gene products to confer resistance [@Anderson2015]. Genetic resistance to P. sojae is the most economical form of control for P. sojae as it confers season-long protection to non-compatible pathotypes [@Dorrance2016]. However, P. sojae pathotype surveys need to be regularly conducted to determine shifts in pathotypes over time and provide recommendations for effective resistance genes. Although state-wide pathotype surveys have been conducted for the past 60 years in the USA, there has been no significant advance in pathotype analysis since the development of the Habgood-Gilmour Spreadsheet (HaGiS), written in Microsoft® Excel, in 1999 [@Herrmann1999; @Kaufmann1958].

Phytophthora sojae pathotype surveys monitor the efficacy of soybean resistance genes in relation to P. sojae population(s). In doing so, large sets of virulence data are generated, potentially for hundreds of isolates [@Dorrance2016]. Using such large datasets within the HaGiS Excel-based program can be cumbersome and time intensive to transfer the data into and perform analysis. The R statistical programming language [@RCT2019] offers the ability to work with large data sets in an easy and efficient manner without additional data entry steps that the HaGiS Excel program requires, while treating the virulence data as read-only, thereby further reducing the chance for errors.

R has become widely used in plant pathology studies due to its open-source framework and amenability to conduct reproducible research [@Sparks2011; @Duku2016; @Bergna2018; @Wallace2018]. Using an R package for analyzing pathotype survey data can replicate all analyses provided by Excel-based programs. It allows users to create reproducible research and more detailed visualizations as well as allowing the plant pathology community to actively contribute to and build upon this code for future studies. For instance, McCoy and Noel [-@McCoy2018] produced R scripts to conduct these analyses originally performed with HaGiS, which were used to create the ‘hagis’ R package [@McCoy2019].

For ease of use the package uses a single argument format, which works in all ‘hagis’ functions. Users provide their own data in the form of a spreadsheet, CSV or text file, specifying the proper fields for analysis. Functions are provided to calculate pathotype complexity and summarize the distribution of reactions for each gene tested. Simple, Shannon, Simpson, Gleason and Evenness diversity indices are calculated for the pathotype data set. Outputs from these analyses are given in publication ready graphics or tables and can be further modified by the user, e.g., Table 1.

The R language offers many advantages to Excel-based data analysis such as reproducibility and user customization. Furthermore, ‘hagis’ takes advantage of the ‘data.table’ package [@Dowle2019] to efficiently handle large data sets such as those produced through P. sojae pathotype surveys rapidly and efficiently. Significantly, ‘hagis’ provides the first development in P. sojae pathotype analysis in 20 years. While ‘hagis’ was developed to support P. sojae pathotype surveys, it was designed to work with any pathotype analyses of gene-for-gene pathosystems to determine effective resistance genes in management.

The package source code, including the Rmarkdown code for this paper, more information and instructions on how to use ‘hagis’ can be found at https://openplantpathology.github.io/hagis/. The package can be downloaded and installed from the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) website (https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=hagis) and is released under the MIT licence.

data(P_sojae_survey)
P_sojae_survey$Rps <-
  gsub(pattern = "Rps ",
       replacement = "",
       x = P_sojae_survey$Rps)
Rps.summary <- summarize_gene(
  x = P_sojae_survey,
  cutoff = 60,
  control = "susceptible",
  sample = "Isolate",
  gene = "Rps",
  perc_susc = "perc.susc"
)
names(Rps.summary) <-
  c("**Gene**", "**No. Susceptible**", "**Perc. Pathogenic**")

pander(Rps.summary,
       caption = "**Table 1.** Example of tabular output from ‘hagis’'s summarize_gene() at 60&nbsp;% susceptibility cut-off. This function produces a detailed table displaying the number of isolates each gene is not effective against, as well as offering a percentage of the isolates tested which are pathogenic on each gene.")

Acknowledgements

Funding for this work was provided by: Michigan Soybean Promotion Committee, Project GREEEN, North Central Soybean Research Program, and GRDC Project DAQ00186 - Improving Grower Surveillance, Management Epidemiology Knowledge And Tools To Manage Crop Disease

Literature Cited

hagis documentation built on Sept. 8, 2023, 5:20 p.m.