Red fluorescent proteins for imaging Zymoseptoria tritici during invasion of wheat

•We investigate brightness and photo-stability of RFPs in live Z. tritici cells.•mCherry is most useful in epi-fluorescence and confocal laser scanning microscopy.•The combination of mCherry and an orange-shifted filter set proves to provide brightest signals.•We provide 4 vectors with various mRFPs for yeast recombination based cloning.•The vectors carry carboxin resistance and integrate as single copies into the sdi1 locus.