Location: Crop Diseases, Pests and Genetics Research
Project Number: 2034-22000-014-024-T
Project Type: Trust Fund Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Oct 1, 2024
End Date: Sep 30, 2025
Objective:
To identify Californian grapevine Trichoderma strains that exhibit effective biological control of fungal pathogens that infect nursery materials.
Objective 1: Screen an existing collection of Californian Trichoderma strains to identify those that protect cuttings from rot and other storage issues.
Objective 2: Assess the ability of novel Californian Trichoderma strains to improve grafting success and survival of grapevines in nursery settings.
Approach:
Trichoderma species are widely used commercial products in agriculture due to their ability to enhance plant vigor and disease resistance, low cost, and easy application. The proposed project seeks to examine whether novel Trichoderma strains, which have previously been observed to have capacity to limit fungal pathogen infections, could protect nursery materials and improve grafting success. Because our collection of Trichoderma strains was collected from vineyards in California, they are likely to exhibit good capacity to survive and colonize grapevine tissues long-term, and therefore provide ongoing biological control of pathogens. Objective 1 will consist of two separate replicated experiments, one per year, to test Trichoderma strains applied to scion cuttings prior to placement in cold storage. The related but distinct Objective 2 will apply Trichoderma to both sides of the graft (rootstock and scion) prior to perform grafting, to observe whether grafting success could be improved. This Objective also will be done in two separate years in a replicated experiment. Collectively, these objectives seek to observe whether existing, novel Trichoderma strains can provide improved biocontrol of fungal pathogens that is equivalent or better than existing management options. If successful, strains from this project can potentially be used to create new biological control products that may provide more effective and economic management options to grapevine nurseries.
