APS Homepage
    Back

2014 APS Annual Meeting Abstract

 

Oral Technical Session: Ecology and Epidemiology

106-O

Validating forensics tools for crop biosecurity: Simple sequence repeat typing of Fusarium proliferatum associated with salmon blotch of onions.
I. MONCRIEF (1), C. Garzon (1), S. Marek (1), A. Gamliel (2), J. Stack (3), Y. Issac (4), J. Fletcher (1)
(1) Oklahoma State Univ, Stillwater, OK, U.S.A.; (2) Inst. Agricultural Engineering ARO, The Volcani Center, Bet Dagan, U.S.A.; (3) Kansas State Univ, Manhattan, KS, U.S.A.; (4) Inst. Agricultural Engineering ARO, The Volcani Center, Bet Dagan, Israel

Ensuring the security of agricultural resources is critical to national security. Microbial forensics technologies can help to identify potential pathogen sources. Since 2008, unprecedented outbreaks of salmon blotch of onion, caused by F. proliferatum (Fp), have occurred in southern Israel. Though presumed to be of natural causes, the disease provided an opportunity to validate plant pathogen forensic tools in the field. To test whether onion sets grown in northern Israel and shipped to southern farms for planting could be a source of the fungus. The diversity and structure of Fp populations from different locations and sample types were investigated. Ninety-one Fp isolates from onion sets, field soil, nearby date palm orchards, weeds and other local vegetation, and symptomatic onion bulbs were characterized using simple sequence repeat (SSR) typing. Of 17 SSR loci screened, 6 were informative. SSR analysis revealed two distinct Fp populations. Onion set strains, from northern Israel, clustered together. Southern strains, whether from soil, weeds, onion bulbs, or adjacent palm trees, also clustered together and were genetically distant from the northern population. The data indicate that the sets were unlikely to have been the source of the fungus responsible for the outbreaks of salmon blotch and demonstrate that SSR typing can be useful in investigations of pathogen origin.

© 2014 by The American Phytopathological Society. All rights reserved.