Project Number: 1245-22000-275-00
Project Type: Appropriated

Start Date: Mar 22, 2012
End Date: Mar 21, 2017

Objective:
1) Develop new diagnostic methods for efficient and well-resolved microscopic images of plant-parasitic nematodes. 2) Expand taxonomic representation for existing DNA markers and evaluate new ones to determine the most reliable regions for nematode identification and phylogeny. 3) Determine nematode identities for unknown or emerging agroecological problems involving nematodes for APHIS personnel, state diagnosticians, and ARS and other researchers.

Approach:
1) Advanced microscopy techniques will reveal more detailed features and increase consistency of nematode description for improved diagnosis of described and undescribed nematodes that may damage agriculturally important plants. 2) Expanding ribosomal and Hsp90 gene sequences to more species beyond the relative handful in GenBank, compared to the many known number of morphospecies, will produce more informative family trees that will demonstrate the distribution of plant parasitism for improved pathology prediction. 3) In the process of characterizing new nematode samples, any plant-parasitic or agriculturally important nematode obtained from a customer may be a new species unknown to science or an existing species not known to be present in the United States, another country, a state or a given host.