METHOD FOR COLLECTING NON-GERMINATED CONIDIA OF SCLEROSPORA SACCHARI AND TARC’S DOWNY MILDEW PROGRAM

Abstract

Artificial inoculation is one of the most important techniques for plant disease research. In the most cases with fungal diseases the conidia, produced on artificial media, are used as inoculum. Sclerospora sacchari Miyake is obligate parasite and its artificial culture has not been successful yet. However, it is relatively easy to collect a large number of conidia from infected leaves. Therefore, artificial inoculations have been conducted with conidia collected from naturally occurring diseased plants. However, the conidia collected are not idea for inoculum because they are composed of mature, immature and germinated ones; i.e., they are not uniform in stage and sometimes germ tubes are entangled and it is difficult to prepare a well-suspended inoculum.