Location: Crop Diseases, Pests and Genetics Research
Project Number: 2034-22000-014-026-T
Project Type: Trust Fund Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Jul 1, 2025
End Date: Jun 30, 2026
Objective:
1. Screen locally isolated bacterial strains for biological control efficacy against powdery mildew in grapevines.
2. Perform genome sequencing on effective biological control strains for full identification.
Approach:
Objective 1) Grape plants will be sprayed with bacterial suspensions of locally isolated bacteria that have been identified for ability to produce chitinase enzymes. Plants will be exposed to powdery mildew-infected source plants and evaluated for development of disease symptoms. Bacteria that inhibit development of powdery mildew will be selected for further characterization in Objective 2.
Objective 2) Bacterial strains that inhibit development of powdery mildew on grape plants will be identified to the species and strain level by genome sequencing to facilitate further development as biological control products. Sequencing will be conducted by a commercial provider, and genome sequences will be compared to existing bacterial genome collections to identify species.