The fungal pathogens Fusarium graminearum and F. culmorum cause ear blight 
disease on cereal crops worldwide. The disease lowers both grain quality and 
grain safety. Disease prevalence is increasing due to changes in cropping 
practices and the difficulties encountered by plant breeders when trying to 
introgress the polygene-based resistance. The molecular basis of resistance to 
Fusarium ear blight in cereal species is poorly understood. This is primarily 
due to the large size of cereal genomes and the expensive resources required to 
undertake gene function studies in cereals. We therefore explored the 
possibility of developing various model floral infection systems that would be 
more amenable to experimental manipulation and high-throughput gene function 
studies. The floral tissues of tobacco, tomato, soybean and Arabidopsis were 
inoculated with Fusarium conidia and this resulted in disease symptoms on 
anthers, anther filaments and petals in each plant species. However, only in 
Arabidopsis did this initial infection then spread into the developing siliques 
and seeds. A survey of 236 Arabidopsis ecotypes failed to identify a single 
genotype that was extremely resistant or susceptible to Fusarium floral 
infections. Three Arabidopsis floral mutants that failed to develop anthers 
and/or functional pollen (i.e. agamous-1, apetala1-3 and dad1) were 
significantly less susceptible to Fusarium floral infection than wild type. 
Deoxynivalenol (DON) mycotoxin production was also detected in Fusarium-infected 
flowers at >1 ppm. This novel floral pathosystem for Arabidopsis appears to be 
highly representative of a serious cereal crop disease.