EGRES-AVIRULENT

Target audience

Sectors related to plant health in general and vegetable production in particular. All sectors interested in improving the sustainability of plant production systems.

Project objective

Improve nematode management strategies by reducing the use of chemical products, crop production costs, environmental impact and risks to the health of workers and consumers, thereby facilitating the transition to sustainable agricultural production systems.

Develop a manual of good practices for using plant resistance against Meloidogyne in horticultural crops, as a tool to help growers prevent the selection of virulent populations and avoid side effects such as the reduction of the natural antagonistic microbiota in agricultural soils.

Project description

Plant-parasitic nematodes of the genus Meloidogyne cause significant economic losses in solanaceous and cucurbit crops. Plant resistance reduces the rate of nematode population development and the damage caused to the crop and the subsequent crop in the rotation. However, its continuous use favours the selection of virulent populations capable of overcoming resistance.

The working hypothesis is that including a greater diversity of resistance genes in the crop rotation sequence will induce physiological changes in nematodes that are passed on to the next generation, reducing their degree of virulence.

Strategies for managing resistant plant germplasm have been designed to inhibit the selection of virulent populations through two approaches:

• by characterising resistant plant germplasm and its effect on virulence selection when incorporated into a crop rotation system.
• by improving the plant through the combination of resistant plant germplasm with resistance-inducing microorganisms. Regarding the second approach, we will

Project funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation. Code AGL2017-89785-R