This work is an extended abstract of a presentation, held at the symposium ‘Non-specific and Specific Innate and Acquired Plant Resistance’ (August 31–September 3, 2006, Budapest, Hungary), devoted to the memory of the late Professor Dr. Zoltán Klement, member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Fusarium species use different reproduction strategies, ranging from frequent heterothallic mating to clonal reproduction. Mating type genes, the major regulators of sexual reproduction are fully functional in “asexual” members of the genus and they may affect important events not only in the sexual but also in the asexual phase of the life cycle of these fungi. Female sterility, a lesser known trait, which greatly influences the frequency of mating and meiotic recombination in fungi, is also affected by genes not directly related to sexual reproduction.
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