Humans are directly dependent on plants for the majority of caloric intake and indirectly through the ecosystem services they provide. Fungi are among the most economically important plant pathogens in both agricultural and non-agricultural populations, influencing the structure and productivity of plant populations. Mitigating disease caused by these fungal pathogens requires an accurate understanding of species richness, their distribution, their relationships to other pathogenic species, the plant species they infect, and the genetic features that allow them to be pathogens. Cercospora species are fungi that are known to cause disease on nearly every major crop plant in the world, including important staples (e.g. rice). However, these fundamental questions - How many species are there? Where are they found? What host species do they impact? What genetic features allow them to cause disease on some hosts and not others? - need to be addressed in a modern context to enable research into mitigating their impacts. The goals of the project are to answer these questions and develop an accessible data interface that will allow other researchers to leverage this information to ultimately mitigate disease. While fungi have long been overlooked, training will be provided to high school, undergraduate, and graduate students to be the next generation of fungal biologists helping to solve global issues caused by fungi. Understanding how fungi impact plant populations requires a na