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Liz Minchinton, at DPI Knoxfield recently announced the successful development of antibodies specific to white blister spores. The antibodies were prepared by project collaborators Dr Alison Wakeham and Dr Roy Kennedy from HRI – Warwick UK. Some antibodies were found to be very specific to the race of white blister on Broccoli, while other antibodies reacted with races of white blister from Radish and Chinese Cabbage. “The antibodies will be used in a spore detector placed in the crop to confirm if spores are present when weather conditions are right for infection”, said Dr Minchinton.
The presence of airborne white blister spores is a key risk factor leading to the development of White Blister disease. The spore detector will increase the power of the Brassicaspot™ disease predictive model, being evaluated for Australian Growers, by Liz and her team under HAL project VG07070- “Benchmarking disease predictive models”. The Brassicaspot™ predictive model, signals a warning whenever weather conditions in a crop are suitable for infection by white blister spores. The VGA Industry Development Officers are available to assist all vegetable growers. If you need to get in touch with current research, or research that has been completed in the past and would like more information, please contact : Slobodan Vujovic Mobile : 0422 583 784 Email : idoeast@vgavioc.org.au |
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