Location: Crop Improvement and Protection Research
Project Number: 2038-22000-019-048-R
Project Type: Reimbursable Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Oct 1, 2023
End Date: Dec 31, 2025
Objective:
Fusarium falciforme is an emerging pathosystem of diverse agricultural crops in California driving stem rot and plant decline; in the absence of decision support and integrated pest management (IPM) tools, chemical-based management is the primary means for mitigating losses. The goal of this project is to advance IPM knowledge for diseases in the F. falciforme complex affecting diverse agricultural crops, which reduce toxic chemical exposure in urban and wildland settings. This project focuses on enabling non-pesticide-based management strategies, thus reducing impacts of existing practices on public health or the environment which involve use of pesticides of high regulatory concern and/or considered high-risk.
Approach:
A Fusarium falciforme culture collection of recoveries from a range of economic crops in California will be established and tested for pathogenicity on a subset of hosts to evaluate if there is any host specificity. Genomic sequencing will be done to generate gene datasets for phylogenetic analysis and genotyping assays. The genomic sequence data will also be used in a software pipeline we have for identifying unique sequences for the development of taxon specific qPCR diagnostic assays.
