Competitive funding has been won for Horticulture Research International from Defra for a project addressing downy mildew.
The project will be led by Roy Kennedy with Central Science Laboratory and aims to develop a generic disease management system to control downy mildew in transplanted vegetable crops.
Kennedy said: 'Downy mildew is an important disease of seedlings of various vegetable crops raised in glasshouses, and can cause severe stunting. Latent symptom-less infections in seedlings that are transplanted into the field can become systemic and initiate epidemics.
'Such disease problems have often led to major insurance indemnity claims against nursery growers that produce transplants and they have consequently adopted the prophylactic use of fungicides to ensure healthy transplant production. This has led to fungicide resistance becoming more prevalent in downy mildew populations.' The aim of the project is to develop techniques to detect downy mildew after it has entered glasshouses as air-borne inoculum through vents. It is thought this is the key primary source of inoculum infecting transplants. The research will use brassicas and lettuce as the model system.
Once fully developed, the system will reduce the need for prophylactic use of fungicides and provide a framework to control downy mildew in other transplanted crops.
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