Crop isolation, not extended rotation length, reduces blackleg (Leptosphaeria maculans) severity of canola (Brassica napus) in south-eastern Australia

2004 ◽  
Vol 44 (6) ◽  
pp. 601 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. J. Marcroft ◽  
S. J. Sprague ◽  
S. J. Pymer ◽  
P.A. Salisbury ◽  
B. J. Howlett

Due to the large increase of canola production in Australia, current blackleg cultural control recommendations (extended rotation length and isolation distance from canola stubble) are not adhered to by farmers in many canola-producing regions. Canola crops are increasingly being sown in short rotation and, in many instances, adjacent to paddocks containing canola stubble. In this study, the level of disease in commercial canola crops was determined for different rotations and distances from canola stubble. There was a strong relationship between the presence of canola stubble from the previous year (6-month-old stubble) and distance to current canola crops, but no relationship between the presence of older (18–42 month old) stubble and distance to current canola crops. Blackleg severity was highest where canola crops had been sown adjacent to 6-month-old canola stubble, with the level of blackleg severity decreasing markedly in the first 100 m. Disease severity then generally declined up to 500 m. Plants 500–1000 m from 6-month-old stubble had similar levels of blackleg infection. Blackleg severity was similar between canola crops sown into 18-month-old canola stubble (short rotation) and crops sown into paddocks that had no history of canola for at least the previous 3 years (long rotation). Based on these findings, we recommend that canola crops should be sown at distances greater than 100 m and preferably 500 m from last season's canola stubble, rather than extending rotation length between crops.

Plant Disease ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 87 (6) ◽  
pp. 752-752 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Li ◽  
K. Sivasithamparam ◽  
M. J. Barbetti

Blackleg, caused by Leptosphaeria maculans, is a major disease of oilseed rape (Brassica napus) grown in Canada, Europe, and Australia. Cv. Surpass 400 was released in Australia in 2000 as the most resistant cultivar to L. maculans. It carries a single dominant resistance gene from B. rapa subsp. sylvestris. This cultivar usually shows a hypersensitive response to L. maculans characterized by small, dark brown lesions that are necrotic, localized, and without pycnidia on cotyledons, leaves, and stems. However, in 2001 on a Western Australian experimental farm, a small proportion of the lesions on the lower stem and crown region of cv. Surpass 400 were typical of those observed in susceptible cultivars, which were brown, necrotic lesions with a darker margin, but they contained fewer pycnidia. Forty seedlings of cv. Surpass 400 and susceptible cv. Westar were inoculated with pycnidiospore suspensions (106/ml) of each of 18 isolates taken from lesions on cv. Surpass 400. All 18 isolates caused collapse of cotyledons of susceptible cv. Westar. Four of these isolates caused large cotyledon lesions with some pycnidia on cv. Surpass 400. Three of these four isolates were subsequently inoculated onto 60 seedlings per isolate, at each of the four cotyledon lobes of each seedling of the two cultivars. Inoculated plants were assessed for disease severity on cotyledons and transplanted to the field 14 days after inoculation. The cotyledons of inoculated cv. Surpass 400 showed characteristic large, necrotic lesions with pycnidia, while the cotyledons of cv. Westar had collapsed and contained a mass of pycnidia. Blackleg disease severity in the crown region of the stem was assessed at 2 weeks before harvest. Fifty-four percent of the cv. Surpass 400 transplanted inoculated plants subsequently developed susceptible symptoms of crown cankers on stems. These symptoms were deep, girdling, brown lesions on the plant crowns with some pycnidia. One hundred percent of cv. Westar plants were infected and dead at this stage. This confirmed the ability of these field isolates to overcome the single dominant resistance gene present in cv. Surpass 400. To our knowledge, this is the first report of breakdown of a single dominant B. rapa subsp. sylvestris gene based resistance to blackleg in oilseed rape in the field.


Plants ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (11) ◽  
pp. 484
Author(s):  
Zou ◽  
Liu ◽  
Chen ◽  
Fernando

Global warming by increased atmospheric CO2 concentration has been widely accepted. Yet, there has not been any consistent conclusion on the doubled CO2 concentration that in the future will affect plant disease incidence and severity. Blackleg disease, mainly caused by Leptosphaeria maculans, is a major disease on canola production globally. Brassica napus and L. maculans have a gene-for-gene interaction, which causes an incompatible reaction between canola plants carrying resistance genes and L. maculans isolates carrying corresponding avirulence genes. In this study, B. napus varieties and lines inoculated with different Leptosphaeria isolates were subjected to simulated growth conditions, namely, growth chambers with normal environments and with controlled CO2 concentrations of 400, 600, and 800 ppm. The results indicated that the elevated CO2 concentrations have no noticeable effect on the inferred phenotypes of the canola–blackleg interactions. However, the disease severity decreased in most of the B. napus–L. maculans interactions at extremely high CO2 concentration (800 ppm). The varied pathogenicity changes of the B. napus–L. maculans pathosystem under elevated CO2 concentrations at 400 or 600 ppm may be due to the genetic background or physiological differences in plants and pathogenicity differences in L. maculans isolates having different Avr gene profiles. The mechanisms by which elevated CO2 concentrations affect the B. napus–L. maculans pathosystem will help us understand how climate change will impact crops and diseases.


1996 ◽  
Vol 74 (12) ◽  
pp. 1930-1936 ◽  
Author(s):  
Curtis B. Rempel ◽  
Robert Hall

Disease incidence, disease severity, areas under the disease incidence and disease severity progress curves, and maximum and minimum incidence and severity of disease were evaluated as measures of resistance in canola (Brassica napus) to blackleg caused by Leptosphaeria maculans. Seven genotypes of spring canola were tested in Ontario at three locations 60, 81, and 102 days after sowing in 1990 and at two locations 55, 70, 85, and 100 days after sowing in 1991. Disease incidence was expressed as the percentage of sampled plants with basal stem canker, and disease severity was assessed as the percentage discolouration of a cross section of the stem base. Based on ease of measurement, range of values, number of significant differences among genotypes, and constancy of rank of genotypes at different locations, measures of disease severity or disease incidence in mature plants proved to be most useful. No advantage was gained by using area under the disease incidence and disease severity progress curves, or maximum and minimum incidence and severity of disease at the last sampling time. It is recommended that resistance of canola stems to blackleg be evaluated from measures of disease severity or disease incidence in mature plants. Keywords: canola, blackleg, Leptosphaeria maculans, resistance measurements.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nazar Zaki ◽  
Hany Alashwal ◽  
Sahar Ibrahim

AbstractObjectiveTo undertake a review and critical appraisal of published/preprint reports that offer methods of determining the effects of hypertension, diabetes, stroke, cancer, kidney issues, and high-cholesterol on COVID-19 disease severity.Data sourcesGoogle Scholar, PubMed, COVID-19 Open Research Dataset: a resource of over 128,000 scholarly articles, including over 59,000 articles with full text related to COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, and coronaviruses.MethodsA search was conducted by two authors independently on the freely available COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19). We developed an automated search engine to screen a total of 59,000 articles in a few seconds. The search engine was built using a retrieval function that ranks a set of documents based on the query terms appearing in each document regardless of their proximity within the document. Filtering of the articles was then undertaken using keywords and questions, e.g. “Effects of diabetes on COVID/normal coronavirus/SARS-CoV-2/nCoV/COVID-19 disease severity, mortality?”. The search terms were repeated for all the comorbidities considered in this paper. Additional articles were retrieved by searching via Google Scholar and PubMed.FindingsA total of 54 articles were considered for a full review. It was observed that diabetes, hypertension, and cholesterol levels possess an apparent relation to COVID-19 severity. Other comorbidities, such as cancer, kidney disease, and stroke, must be further evaluated to determine a strong relationship to the virus. Reports associating cancer, kidney disease, and stroke with COVID-19 should be carefully interpreted, not only because of the size of the samples, but also because patients could be old, have a history of smoking, or have any other clinical condition suggesting that these factors might be associated with the poor COVID-19 outcomes rather than the comorbidity itself. Such reports could lead many oncologists and physicians to change their treatment strategies without solid evidence and recommendations. Further research regarding this relationship and its clinical management is warranted. Additionally, treatment options must be examined further to provide optimal treatment and ensure better outcomes for patients suffering from these comorbidities. It should be noted that, whether definitive measurements exist or not, the care of patients as well as the research involved should be largely prioritized to tackle this deadly pandemic.


2010 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 50 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. J. Sprague ◽  
J. A. Kirkegaard ◽  
B. J. Howlett ◽  
J. Graham

Leptosphaeria maculans causes blackleg of Brassica napus (canola), manifesting in symptoms including leaf lesions, stem canker, and root rot. Root rot is an extension of the stem canker phase of the disease resulting from foliar infection; however, the role of root rot in grain yield loss has not been investigated. Field experiments were conducted in south-eastern Australia to determine the efficacy of fungicides and host resistance to stem canker for the control of root rot, along with the association between root rot severity and grain yield. Fungicides applied as a seed dressing (fluquinconazole) or coated on fertiliser (flutriafol) reduced root rot severity by 16 and 41%, respectively. Root rot severity was 78% less in a B. napus cultivar with an Australian Blackleg Rating (ABR) of 9.0 (highly resistant to stem canker) than in a moderately resistant cultivar (ABR 5.5), and was also reduced in Brassica species with good resistance to stem canker. Root rot caused little or no additional reduction in yield or harvest index of individual B. napus plants above that caused by stem canker. Individual upright plants with greater than 80% of the stem cross-section blackened had significantly reduced seed yield; however, this was influenced by rainfall during the grain-filling period. This study shows that current management strategies for stem canker caused by L. maculans also control root rot in B. napus, as although the symptoms in roots are severe, these symptoms have no additional effect on yield.


2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 313
Author(s):  
Aldrin Y. Cantila ◽  
Nur Shuhadah Mohd Saad ◽  
Junrey C. Amas ◽  
David Edwards ◽  
Jacqueline Batley

Among the Brassica oilseeds, canola (Brassica napus) is the most economically significant globally. However, its production can be limited by blackleg disease, caused by the fungal pathogen Lepstosphaeria maculans. The deployment of resistance genes has been implemented as one of the key strategies to manage the disease. Genetic resistance against blackleg comes in two forms: qualitative resistance, controlled by a single, major resistance gene (R gene), and quantitative resistance (QR), controlled by numerous, small effect loci. R-gene-mediated blackleg resistance has been extensively studied, wherein several genomic regions harbouring R genes against L. maculans have been identified and three of these genes were cloned. These studies advance our understanding of the mechanism of R gene and pathogen avirulence (Avr) gene interaction. Notably, these studies revealed a more complex interaction than originally thought. Advances in genomics help unravel these complexities, providing insights into the genes and genetic factors towards improving blackleg resistance. Here, we aim to discuss the existing R-gene-mediated resistance, make a summary of candidate R genes against the disease, and emphasise the role of players involved in the pathogenicity and resistance. The comprehensive result will allow breeders to improve resistance to L. maculans, thereby increasing yield.


1995 ◽  
Vol 75 (2) ◽  
pp. 437-439 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. R. Stringam ◽  
V. K. Bansal ◽  
M. R. Thiagarajah ◽  
D. F. Degenhardt ◽  
J. P. Tewari

The doubled haploid breeding method and greenhouse screening using cotyledon bio-assay were successfully applied to transfer blackleg resistance from the Australian cultivar Maluka (Brassicas napus), into susceptible advanced B. napus lines from the University of Alberta. This approach for blackleg resistance breeding was effective and efficient as several superior blackleg resistant breeding lines were identified within 4 yr from the initial cross. One of these lines (91–21864NA) was entered in the 1993 trials of the Western Canada Canola/Rapeseed Recommending Committee. Key words: Blackleg resistance, Leptosphaeria maculans, doubled haploid, Brassica napus


2004 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 295 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. J. Richardson ◽  
J. E. Growns ◽  
R. A. Cook

Caridean shrimps are an integral component of lowland river ecosystems in south-eastern Australia, but their distributions may be affected by flow alteration. Monthly shrimp samples were collected from slackwaters in three hydrologically distinct sections of the heavily regulated Campaspe River and the less regulated Broken River for three consecutive years. The distributions of Paratya australiensis, Caridina mccullochi and Macrobrachium australiense, along with their life history in river sections with different hydrology are outlined. Paratya australiensis and M. australiense occurred in all sections, but C. mccullochi was absent from sections of the Campaspe River that received irrigation flows during summer/autumn. Shrimp larvae were most abundant in summer (December–February) and juvenile recruitment continued through to mid autumn (April). Breeding and recruitment of P. australiensis occurred for longer than other shrimps. Apart from large adult and berried M. australiense, all life stages of shrimps commonly occurred in slackwaters, particularly the larval and juvenile stages. Irrigation flows in summer/autumn probably adversely affect the size, extent and arrangement of slackwaters, at a time when they may be critical habitats for C. mccullochi larval development and recruitment. Dams and weirs in the Campaspe River may have influenced shrimp abundance and the timing of breeding.


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