Effects of leaf wetness duration and temperature on infection of Prunus by Xanthomonas arboricola pv. pruni

Gerard Morales, Concepció Moragrega, Emilio Montesinos and Isidre Llorente

PLOS ONE, 2018, vol. 13, issue 3, 1-15

Abstract: Xanthomonas arboricola pv. pruni is the causal agent of bacterial spot disease of stone fruits and almond. The bacterium is distributed throughout the major stone-fruit-producing areas of the World and is considered a quarantine organism in the European Union according to the Council Directive 2000/29/EC, and by the European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization. The effect of leaf wetness duration and temperature on infection of Prunus by X. arboricola pv. pruni was determined in controlled environment experiments. Potted plants of the peach-almond hybrid GF-677 were inoculated with bacterial suspensions and exposed to combinations of six leaf wetness durations (from 0 to 24 h) and seven fixed temperatures (from 5 to 35°C) during the infection period. Then, plants were transferred to a biosafety greenhouse, removed from bags, and incubated at optimal conditions for disease development. Although leaf wetness was required for infection of Prunus by X. arboricola pv. pruni, temperature had a greater effect than leaf wetness duration on disease severity. The combined effect of wetness duration and temperature on disease severity was quantified using a modification of the Weibull equation proposed by Duthie. The reduced-form of Duthie’s model obtained by nonlinear regression analysis fitted well to data (R = 0.87 and R2adj = 0.85), and all parameters were significantly different from 0. The estimated optimal temperature for infection by X. arboricola pv. pruni was 28.9°C. Wetness periods longer than 10 h at temperatures close to 20°C, or 5 h at temperatures between 25 and 35°C were necessary to cause high disease severity. The predictive capacity of the model was evaluated using an additional set of data obtained from new wetness duration-temperature combinations. In 92% of the events the observed severity agreed with the predicted level of infection risk. The risk chart derived from the reduced form of Duthie’s model can be used to estimate the potential risk for infection of Prunus by X. arboricola pv. pruni based on observed or forecasted temperature and wetness duration.

Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0193813 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 93813&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0193813

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0193813

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().