Project Number: 5305-22000-012-31
Project Type: General Cooperative Agreement

Start Date: Oct 01, 2012
End Date: Jun 30, 2015

Objective:
Plant pathogens in the genus Phytophthora have a significant impact on a wide range of California specialty crops either by their direct effect on plant health and yield reductions or indirectly with regulatory restrictions on the movement/shipment of plant material intended to prevent pathogen introduction or spread. Current detection techniques do not adequately fulfill the need for sensitive, accurate, rapid and cost effective detection of these pathogens, which hinders efforts at disease management. This proposal will address this by expanding a current research project on molecular detection of Phytophthora spp. to include additional species and detection platforms. The collaboration established in this agreement will provide support for this objective by sharing expertise with the genus and providing DNA samples for a range of species to use in the research.

Approach:
The collaborator in this proposal will provide DNA samples from a wide range of Phytophthora spp. that will be used to design and validate molecular diagnostic markers for a range of Phytophthora species. The diagnostic platforms that will be used include TaqMan real time PCR as well as isothermal techniques.