Location: Crop Production and Protection
Project Number: 0500-00102-001-053-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Jun 1, 2024
End Date: May 31, 2025
Objective:
The overall project goal is to quantify foliar pathogens and develop predictive tools from standardized and validated datasets to guide grower decisions, targeting foliar and seedling diseases. The specific objectives are:
1. Validate and standardize molecular assays for the detection of cotton foliar pathogens.
2. Process and quantify inoculum potential on a weekly to bi-weekly basis from air samplers at three locations (management site and two commercial locations) for each project participant in the cotton modeling initiative.
3. Collect disease data for seedling disease – stand counts and screening seedlings for pathogen presence and frequency
4. Collect weather data using subscriptions from a cooperator
5. All data collected will be used to develop a predictive tool for cotton disease management
Approach:
To accomplish the proposed objectives for foliar diseases, cultures and samples from pathogens of interest will be used to quantify and validate detection assays using molecular diagnostics. Validated assays will be used to process samples from all other cooperators working on cotton. Two main pathogens of interest will be targeted: Corynespora cassiicola and Ramulariopsis spp. Samples will include commercial cotton fields and cotton management sites at research stations. The resulting data will be merged with collected data for visual disease ratings, monitored with air samplers, weather conditions recorded, and other crop information recorded (i.e. planting date, planting rate, row spacing, and other agronomic data).
