scholarly journals Molecular Tracking and Remote Sensing to Evaluate New Chemical Treatments Against the Maize Late Wilt Disease Causal Agent, Magnaporthiopsis maydis

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ofir Degani ◽  
Shlomit Dor ◽  
Assaf Chen ◽  
Valerie Orlov-Levin ◽  
Avital Stolov-Yosef ◽  
...  

Late wilt is a destructive disease of corn: outbreaks occur at the advanced growth stage and lead to severe dehydration of susceptible hybrids. The disease’s causal agent is the fungus Magnaporthiopsis maydis, whose spread relies on infested soils, seeds, and several alternative hosts. The current study aimed at advancing our understanding of the nature of this plant disease and revealing new ways to monitor and control it. Two field experiments were conducted in a heavily infested area in northern Israel seeded with highly sensitive corn hybrid. The first experiment aimed at inspecting the Azoxystrobin (AS) fungicide applied by spraying during and after the land tillage. Unexpectedly, the disease symptoms in this field were minor and yields were high. Nevertheless, up to 100% presence of the pathogen within the plant’s tissues was measured using the quantitative real-time PCR method. The highest AS concentration tested was the most effective treatment, and resulted in a 6% increase in cob yield and a 4% increase in A-class yield. In the second experiment conducted in the following summer of the same year in a nearby field, the disease outbreak was dramatically higher, with about 350 times higher levels of the pathogen DNA in the untreated plots’ plants. In this field, fungicide mixtures were applied using a dripline assigned for two coupling rows. The most successful treatment was AS and the Difenoconazole mixture, in which the number of infected plants decreased by 79%, and a 116% increase in crop yield was observed, along with a 41% increase in crop quality. Evaluation of the effectiveness of the treatments on the plants’ health using a remote, thermal infra-red sensitive camera supported the results and proved to be an essential research tool.

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ghulam Muhae-Ud-Din ◽  
Delai Chen ◽  
Taiguo Liu ◽  
Wanquan Chen ◽  
Li Gao

Abstract Tilletia controversa Kühn (TCK) is the causal agent of dwarf bunt of wheat, a destructive disease in wheat-growing regions of the world. The role of Meja, SA and Meja + SA were characterized for their control of TCK into roots, coleoptiles and anthers. The response of the defence genes PR-10a, Catalase, COI1-1, COII-2 and HRin1 was upregulated by Meja, SA and Meja + SA treatments, but Meja induced high level of expression compared to SA and Meja + SA at 1, 2, and 3 weeks in roots and coleoptiles, respectively. The severity of TCK effects in roots was greater at 1 week, but it decreased at 2 weeks in all treatments. We also investigated TCK hyphae proliferation into coleoptiles at 3 weeks and into anthers to determine whether hyphae move from the roots to the upper parts of the plants. The results showed that no hyphae were present in the coleoptiles and anthers of Meja-, SA- and Meja + SA-treated plants, while the hyphae were located on epidermal and sub-epidermal cells of anthers. In addition, the severity of hyphae increased with the passage of time as anthers matured. Bunted seeds were observed in the non-treated inoculated plants, while no disease symptoms were observed in the resistance of inducer treatments and control plants. Plant height was reduced after TCK infection compared to that of the treated inoculated and non-inoculated treatments. Together, these results suggested that Meja and SA display a distinct role in activation of defence genes in the roots and coleoptiles and that they eliminate the fungal pathogen movement to upper parts of the plants with the passage of time as the anthers mature.


1977 ◽  
Vol 17 (86) ◽  
pp. 495 ◽  
Author(s):  
KJ Middleton

The causal agent of a common head rot of sunflowers in Queensland was isolated and identified as Rhizopus oryzae. Field experiments were conducted to investigate the environmental and host conditions suitable for disease development, and control of the disease by the use of fungicides. The disease occurs in wound inoculated plants when atmospheric humidity is high. Dicloran is capable of restricting established infection, but wound inoculations made after the application of the fungicide avoid the protective barrier and are uninfluenced by it. The possible use of chemicals to control the disease is discussed.


2005 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 380-387 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yan Q. Xiong ◽  
Julie Willard ◽  
Jagath L. Kadurugamuwa ◽  
Jun Yu ◽  
Kevin P. Francis ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Therapeutic options for invasive Staphylococcus aureus infections have become limited due to rising antimicrobial resistance, making relevant animal model testing of new candidate agents more crucial than ever. In the present studies, a rat model of aortic infective endocarditis (IE) caused by a bioluminescently engineered, biofilm-positive S. aureus strain was used to evaluate real-time antibiotic efficacy directly. This strain was vancomycin and cefazolin susceptible but gentamicin resistant. Bioluminescence was detected and quantified daily in antibiotic-treated and control animals with IE, using a highly sensitive in vivo imaging system (IVIS). Persistent and increasing cardiac bioluminescent signals (BLS) were observed in untreated animals. Three days of vancomycin therapy caused significant reductions in both cardiac BLS (>10-fold versus control) and S. aureus densities in cardiac vegetations (P < 0.005 versus control). However, 3 days after discontinuation of vancomycin therapy, a greater than threefold increase in cardiac BLS was observed, indicating relapsing IE (which was confirmed by quantitative culture). Cefazolin resulted in modest decreases in cardiac BLS and bacterial densities. These microbiologic and cardiac BLS differences during therapy correlated with a longer time-above-MIC for vancomycin (>12 h) than for cefazolin (∼4 h). Gentamicin caused neither a reduction in cardiac S. aureus densities nor a reduction in BLS. There were significant correlations between cardiac BLS and S. aureus densities in vegetations in all treatment groups. These data suggest that bioluminescent imaging provides a substantial advance in the real-time monitoring of the efficacy of therapy of invasive S. aureus infections in live animals.


1987 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. C. Evans ◽  
C. Prior

Crop losses due to disease are hard to quantify but a fair estimate of that caused in cocoa by pod diseases is around £1500 million per annum. There is, therefore, a strong incentive to control such diseases but the circumstances in which much of the crop is grown are such that effective chemical treatments may not be economically viable. For this reason, good management techniques also have an important part to play.


Author(s):  
P.A. Popov ◽  
◽  
V.S. Babunova ◽  

Hormones are an integral part of milk and throughout lactation, the content of certain hormones is unstable. Hormones regulate the process of starting lactation of animals, the lactation process itself, and also the other functions of the body. Milk is of great importance for the growth of young animals and the formation of immunity. Milk is a special product in the diet and is an important food and raw material for the production of dairy products for people. It contains a large amount of protein, fat, carbohydrates, vitamins and trace elements in biologically available form. But at the same time, over the past few years, more and more evidence has emerged that hormones in dairy products can impact on human health. Thus, some estrogens and insulin-like growth factor IGF-1 are involved in the initiation and provocation of breast, prostate and endometrial tumors. That’s why, it is necessary to normalize and control the content of certain hormones in milk with highly sensitive methods.


1997 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 515-519 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julio A. Scursoni ◽  
Emilio H. Satorre

The objective of this paper was to evaluate the effect of preplant applications of trifluralin on barley stand and yield, and control of grass weeds in field experiments during 1992 and 1993. Factors examined were: (1) crop planting patterns (conventional drill with rows 15 cm apart and deep-seeder drill with rows 25 cm apart), (2) herbicide application times (22 d before sowing and immediately before sowing), and (3) herbicide application. During 1993, hand-weeded plots also were established. Trifluralin applied preplant at 528 g ai/ha reduced weed density and biomass. Weed control was higher under conventional planting than under the deep planting pattern, and there was no effect of the time of application on herbicide efficacy. There was no herbicide injury to the crop, and grain yield was higher in treated than in untreated plots due to successful weed control.


2019 ◽  
Vol 116 (10) ◽  
pp. 4156-4165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sören R. Künzel ◽  
Jasjeet S. Sekhon ◽  
Peter J. Bickel ◽  
Bin Yu

There is growing interest in estimating and analyzing heterogeneous treatment effects in experimental and observational studies. We describe a number of metaalgorithms that can take advantage of any supervised learning or regression method in machine learning and statistics to estimate the conditional average treatment effect (CATE) function. Metaalgorithms build on base algorithms—such as random forests (RFs), Bayesian additive regression trees (BARTs), or neural networks—to estimate the CATE, a function that the base algorithms are not designed to estimate directly. We introduce a metaalgorithm, the X-learner, that is provably efficient when the number of units in one treatment group is much larger than in the other and can exploit structural properties of the CATE function. For example, if the CATE function is linear and the response functions in treatment and control are Lipschitz-continuous, the X-learner can still achieve the parametric rate under regularity conditions. We then introduce versions of the X-learner that use RF and BART as base learners. In extensive simulation studies, the X-learner performs favorably, although none of the metalearners is uniformly the best. In two persuasion field experiments from political science, we demonstrate how our X-learner can be used to target treatment regimes and to shed light on underlying mechanisms. A software package is provided that implements our methods.


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