A new project is seeking to understand why, despite much research and many breakthroughs, late blight in potato remains stubbornly difficult to control with efficient and environmentally friendly methods.
The project, called IPMBlight 2.0 and funded through the C-IPM ERA-Net (Coordinated Integrated Pest Management European Research Area Network) with support from INRA’s SMaCH (Sustainable Management of Crop Health) metaprogramme, brings together eight institutions (academic research, extension specialists and breeders) from five European countries.
They believe one of the keys to understanding why late blight remains a major threat to European potato crops is the genetic and phenotypic structure of late blight populations. They intend to observe these populations at a European scale and integrate this information into upgraded Decision Support Systems (DSS).
The project is tackling an apparently simple question: ‘Can we develop IPM (Integrated Pest Management) strategies to durably and efficiently keep late blight under control?’ “We face a big challenge, as late blight is still a big problem, at the European and even worldwide scales,” coordinator Didier Andrivon (pictured right) told INRA’s SMaCH website. “So, we have to gather our forces and means to solve the mystery of repeated invasions of this disease.”
Late blight is caused by an oomycete, Phytophthora infestans , characterized by a strong genetic instability of its populations. This instable genetic structure jeopardizes both the durable deployment of resistant cultivars and sustainable fungicide management, reports the website. It is therefore crucial to characterize and understand the mechanisms driving population changes for a more durable control of the disease.
Two types of reproduction regimes are already known in Europe, it adds. Western and southern populations are mainly clonal and subject to frequent selective sweeps. In contrast, populations from northern and north-eastern Europe are highly diverse genetically, and probably sexually reproducing.
Both situations are problematic for disease control, reports the website, but for different reasons. The rapid spread of new genotypes in clonal populations favours the fast development of new virulence or fungicide insensitivity, while the high diversity and constant presence of sexual inoculum in Nordic countries generates faster and earlier epidemics.
“We still miss the knowledge to anticipate when the next changes will occur and the likely characteristics of the next invasive genotypes,” stressed Didier Andrivon. Gaining that knowledge, by linking genotypic and phenotypic information about P. infestans populations is the first priority of IPMblight 2.0.
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