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Workshop covers lab and greenhouse methods of working with the brassica black leg pathogen

Posted by CAHNRS.Web Team | September 26, 2016
Jim davis uses tweezers to work separate specimens on a lab bench.
Jim Davis isolating the black leg pathogen from canola stems.

On July 15, 2015, Jim Davis and Megan Wingerson from the Canola, Rapeseed, and Mustard Program at the University of Idaho (http://www.cals.uidaho.edu/brassica/) visited Lindsey du Toit’s vegetable seed pathology program at the WSU Mount Vernon NWREC for a hands-on workshop that covered lab and greenhouse methods of working with the brassica black leg pathogen, Phoma lingam (Leptosphaeria maculans and L. biglobosa). Jim and Megan worked with Lindsey and Mike Derie, Scientific Assistant in Lindsey’s program, on inoculating brassica seedlings, isolating the pathogen from infected plant material, culturing the fungus, single-spore isolations, seed health assays, etc. This workshop was held in response to the 2014 outbreak of black leg across the Willamette Valley of Oregon, as well as finding black leg in more than 15 winter canola crops in Idaho (from Grangeville to Moscow) and in winter canola crops in Umatilla Co., Oregon in spring 2015.