Location: Crop Improvement and Protection Research
Project Number: 2038-22000-019-047-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Sep 15, 2023
End Date: Aug 31, 2026
Objective:
The objectives of this project are to characterize plant beneficial and antagonistic organisms associated with the carrot rhizosphere under healthy and diseased conditions. The rhizosphere will be sampled from carrots with and without cavity spot disease caused by the soil-borne oomycete Pythium violae and those that are infected or not infected with root-knot nematodes (RKN), Meloidogyne spp., which causes forking and galling of carrots. Characterization of the breadth of organisms associated with diseased and healthy carrots has not been previously conducted and is anticipated to provide additional insights on causal agents of carrot diseases, but also an understanding of the beneficial organisms associated with healthy plants.
Approach:
The soil and roots of carrots will be sampled from healthy and diseased plants from commercial carrot fields. Metagenomics will be used to analyze DNA sequences from all the organisms in bulk soil samples that also contain carrot roots, and thereby identify pathogenic and potentially beneficial microorganisms.
