Plant microbiome-based approaches aim to enhance plant immunity and resilience by leveraging beneficial microbes and managing the microbial community through both direct applications and indirect agricultural practices. Advances in sequencing technologies now enable targeted, sustainable disease management strategies that complement traditional crop protection within integrated pest management (IPM) frameworks.
The invasive spotted wing drosophila (SWD) is an emerging pest of fruit crops in Scotland and efforts to develop IPM strategies that control numbers and limit damage are focussing on understanding the population genetics, habitat and landscape features and varietal susceptibility.
IPM research has brought together and tested late blight managment components including host resistance, disease forcasting, spore detection, inoculum sources and fungicide programmes.
IPM research has brought together and tested late blight management components including host resistance, disease forecasting, spore detection, inoculum sources and fungicide programmes.
The use of resistant cultivars is a key component of integrated management of potato cyst nematodes. Potato cyst nematodes are major pests of potato in the UK causing significant economic losses. Their occurrence in Scotland is increasing, particularly the pale potato cyst nematode (wPCN) Globodera pallida, and with further spread there is an increased risk of loss of seed land.
There are numerous species of microscopic Free-Living Nematodes (FLN) that affect hundreds of crops globally directly through root feeding that results in reduced yields or indirectly through transmission of viruses that impact quality of produce. Plant pathogenic species of FLN are primarily ectoparasitic root feeders though some species, known as semi endo-parasitic, will briefly enter the host crop. Thus, unlike other groups of plant feeding nematodes, like potato cyst nematodes, typically FLN undertake no significant part of their life cycle within a host plant. FLN also comprise of a range of feeding groups which are considered beneficial to soils: bacteriovores, fungivores, omnivores and predators. FLN typically occur in discrete patches therefore it is unusual for nematode related problems to be uniform across fields.
Culturing collected insect material allows the preservation of live reference collections and provides insect material for research.
Emerging Technologies are increasing the availability of remotely acquired crop data for farmers. At the James Hutton Institute several research projects are exploring how this data can be used to create novel tools for IPM programmes.
Soil-borne pathogens of potato cause a number of serious blemish diseases. By employing appropriate soil sampling strategies in conjunction with a method for soil DNA extraction and real-time PCR assays to detect and quantify target pathogens, we can validate the relationship between soil-borne inoculum and disease risk. The relationship between pathogen detection and disease risk for black dot (Lees et al. 2010 and Brierley et al. 2015) and powdery scab (Brierley et al. 2012) have been determined. Furthermore, the impact of soil-borne inoculum on disease has been investigated in conjunction with other control factors such as host resistance and crop management, for example, crop duration and chemical control (Brierley et al. 2018).
Blackleg (including soft rot) of potato is a devastating disease for which there are no chemical treatments. Disease control is particularly important for the seed potato industry as the pathogen, once present, increases in population through seed generations. Since the 1960s, disease has been controlled by ventilated storage, seed certification, good hygiene and more recently by managing seed imports (safe haven scheme and Government legislation). While disease incidence is much reduced than 50 years ago, it still remains a major problem both in Europe and beyond. Over the last 5 years blackleg disease appears to be on the increase although the reasons for this are not clear. At the Institute we are focussing on 4 control measures to be included in the blackleg IPM strategy.
