Abstract
Skin blemishes of potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) tubers can cause severe economical losses to production. Some blemishes are due to known pathogens and others whose causes are unknown are called atypical blemishes. The present work aims at determining the origin of superficial atypical blemishes on a set of 204 tubers coming from 12 different French regions producing potato. The diversity of fungi and Streptomyces bacteria associated with blemishes was investigated by systematic isolation followed by identification by sequencing the internal transcribed spacer of the ribosomal DNA for fungi and by sequencing the 16S ribosomal DNA for bacteria. We found a high microbial diversity represented by 349 fungal isolates belonging to at least 47 different species and 21 bacterial strains of Streptomyces sp. The most represented fungi belonged to the genera Fusarium, Rhizoctonia, Alternaria, Penicillium, and Clonostachys. The pathogenicity of representative isolates was assessed in three bioassays; two bioassays based on single inoculations in previously sterilized potting mixture, and one bioassay based on both single and double inoculations under hydroponic conditions. We fulfilled the Koch’s postulates for Rhizoctonia solani AG 3 producing sclerotia. For other fungal and bacterial strains, our results did not show any causality or relationship between a single isolate or a complex and the occurrence of the blemishes. Moreover, the observation of irregular polygonal sunken corky lesions (polygonal lesions)—the most frequent atypical blemish—on non-inoculated tubers, suggested that the atypical blemishes could as well be a reaction of the plant to stressful environmental conditions.
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank all technical partners, namely Pom’ Alliance and Germicopa Seed Production, for supplying tuber samples, Bretagne Plants for supplying strains T FSa and T FSC1 and INRA, Station de Pathologie Végétale, Le Rheu (France) for supplying the strains 9529b and i4 (9729-1). We also thank H. Friberg for comments on the manuscript.
Marie Fiers was financially supported by a PhD funding from the National Association of Technical Research (ANRT) (CIFRE n°1085/2006).
This work was part of a wider project: Program of Collaborative Research (PRC) between Bretagne Biotechnologie Végétale (BBV), Bretagne Plants and Germicopa, funded by the Region Brittany.
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Fiers, M., Chatot, C., Edel-Hermann, V. et al. Diversity of microorganisms associated with atypical superficial blemishes of potato tubers and pathogenicity assessment. Eur J Plant Pathol 128, 353–371 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10658-010-9657-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10658-010-9657-2