A Greenhouse Method to Evaluate Sunflower Quantitative Resistance to Basal Stalk Rot Caused by Sclerotinia sclerotiorum .

Abstract

Resistance of sunflower to basal stalk rot (BSR) caused by the fungus Sclerotinia sclerotiorum is quantitative, controlled by multiple genes contributing small effects. Consequently, artificial inoculation procedures allowing sufficient throughput and resolution of resistance are needed to identify highly resistant sunflower germplasm resources and to map loci contributing to resistance. The objective of this study was to develop a greenhouse-based method for evaluating sunflower quantitative resistance to BSR that would be simple, space- and time-efficient, high throughput, high resolution, and correlated with field observations. Experiments were conducted with 5-week-old sunflower plants and Sclerotinia -infested millet seed as inoculum to assess the impact of pot size and temperature and to determine the most favorable inoculum rate and placement. Subsequently, an additional experiment was performed to assess the correlation of the greenhouse inoculation procedure with field results by using a panel of 32 sunflower genotypes with known field response to BSR previously determined in multiyear, multilocation artificially inoculated trials. Experimental observations indicated that the newly developed greenhouse inoculation procedure provided improved resolution to identify highly resistant genotypes and was strongly correlated with field observations. This method will be useful for screening of sunflower experimental and breeding materials, disease phenotyping of genetic mapping populations, and evaluation of resistance to different pathogen isolates.

Plant phenotyping relevance

ヒマワリの病害抵抗性という植物状態を評価する温室接種・評価法を開発し、圃場結果との相関で検証した研究であり、表現型取得法が中心である。

Code and data availability

The article describes a greenhouse phenotyping method for sunflower basal stalk rot resistance with SAS-based statistical analysis, but no public phenotype dataset, image/sensor data, author code repository, or supplement with data/code is mentioned. Analysis was done in SAS (commercial software) with no availability,,

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