POPAT - Potato pathogen populations in changing climatic conditions of Norway and Poland and the mechanisms of their

Potato is the fourth most important food crop in the world. In Norway, 321 100 tons of potatoes were produced in 2010, while Polish production was estimated at 8 700 000 tons. Climate change affects the agriculture severely, and one important aspect of it is the impact on plant diseases and pathogen populations. The project will focus on potato pathogens: Phytophthora infestans causing potato late blight and Pectobacterium spp. and Dickeya spp. causing black leg and soft rot of the potato tubers. Both diseases bring crop and yield losses and the chemical protection against late blight is intensive, expensive and harmful for the natural environment. The prime goals of the project are: to characterize samples of current populations of late blight and pectinolytic bacteria in both countries, to evaluate resistance of various potato genotypes to selected isolates of pathogen, to estimate the influence of the weather on both host resistance and virulence expression, to identify inoculum sources and disease pressure in relation to weather and to develop a weather based forecasting model for potato late blight incorporating the effect of resistance. We will collect and isolate pectinolytic bacteria and perform genotypic and phylogenetic analysis of their biodiversity, determine the temperature dependent phenotypes of new isolates (in vitro growth, motility, survival in water, soil, potato tubers at different temperatures, production of biofilm, siderophores, bacteriocins, susceptibility to antibiotics, temperature dependent gene expression, genes coding coronatine and other toxins) and test the host resistance in laboratory soft rot tests. We will perform field trials for late blight resistance in both countries on selected potatoes with or without resistance genes. We will closely monitor the weather parameters within these fields, collect P. infestans samples and characterize their phenotype, genotype and relative expression of virulence factors.