Institut für Pflanzenschutz in Ackerbau und Grünland
Synchytrium endobioticum, the pathogen that causes potato wart disease, is regulated as a quarantine pest in Europe and Canada. This categorisation is based on the resistant resting spores of S. endobioticum, which can survive in the soil for more than 40 years. The project will focus on soil sampling methods to improve the efficiency and sensitivity of detecting resting spores. The focus is on the investigation of piler dirt in order to assess the actual spread of potato wart disease. The detection of permanent sporangia in grid soil samples is difficult due to the uneven distribution within a field. The probability of detecting a contaminated field is therefore very low, especially when the spore count is low. Piler dirt sampling is of primary interest, since sampling soil in close association with the tubers is favoured using these methods, and unlike grid soil sampling, piler dirt sampling should be representative of soil from the entire field. The current CFIA method used to extract resting spores from soil samples results in an estimated ~37% recovery of spores from the sample, meaning that approximately 2 out of every 3 spores present in the soil sample are lost during the extraction process. Thus, in addition to the aim of improving the efficiency of sampling, a further aim of the project is to improve the detection sensitivity of resting spores
Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture
