How to manage ‘impossible to manage’ diseases: case study sclerotinia
- Date:
- 2018-04-27
- Time:
- 12:30
- Place:
- Instituto de Ciencias Agrarias, Salón de actos
- Speaker:
- Martin Barbetti
- Filiation:
- School of Agriculture and Environment, University of Western Australia
- Title:
- How to manage ‘impossible to manage’ diseases: case study sclerotinia
- Summary:
- Sclerotinia rot (SR), caused by Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, is a serious threat to oilseed and vegetable Brassica production worldwide. Management of SR relies heavily upon cultural and/or chemical control options that often provide only partial and/or sporadic control and can be cost-prohibitive. While host resistance was the obvious solution, there have been many challenges to that, including inadequate screening techniques to identify resistance, inadequate understanding of pathogen diversity, and a reluctance to shift away from chemical reliance despite its general failure to deliver. Efforts over recebt years have now resulted in development and application of host differentials enabling the first characterisation of pathogen pathotypes. This, combined with development of more appropriate screening methods, have revealed many new sources of high level pathotype-dependent and pathotype-independent resistances to this once-considered ‘impossible to manage’ disease. Understanding and characterising the pathogen population and locating effective host resistances should enable effective disease control for the first time using commercial resistant varieties. However, this is yet to happen and the question is will that happen and if not why not?