Building a Decision Support Tool for Potato Black-leg Disease (DeS-BL)

Blackleg is a major disease with losses estimated at £50 million annually in the UK seed market alone. The main genera are Pectobacterium and Dickeya. Pectobacterium atrosepticum (Pba) is by far the most important species in the UK, and will be tackled by this project. Disease is caused when these bacteria from infected tubers enter growing stems. >50% of seed of all classes has some level of blackleg infection; the main cause of seed downgrading and failure by a factor of 10. Blackleg has become more common in the UK over the last 8-10 years, for unknown reasons.

Unpublished work provides evidence to support this project:

• Pba can enter plants directly from the soil (environmental) and not just via infected tubers
• Irrigation exacerbates environmental blackleg
• Free Living Nematodes enable blackleg organisms to enter potato plants

The project aims to develop new methods to control Pba and to make a major impact on the potato industry through uptake of these methods and of a new decision support tool.

The project, ‘Building a Decision Support Tool for Blackleg Disease (DeS-BL), which secured funding via the BBSRC call for work on Bacterial Diseases, began in late 2020. AHDB supported the application and will provide a ‘in-kind’ contribution to deliver Knowledge Exchange through our Farm Excellence Platform.

Blackleg is a major disease with losses estimated at £50 million annually in the UK seed market alone. The main genera are Pectobacterium and Dickeya. Pectobacterium atrosepticum (Pba) is by far the most important species in the UK, and will be tackled by this project. Disease is caused when these bacteria from infected tubers enter growing stems. >50% of seed of all classes has some level of blackleg infection; the main cause of seed downgrading and failure by a factor of 10. Blackleg has become more common in the UK over the last 8-10 years, for unknown reasons.

Unpublished work provides evidence to support this project:

• Pba can enter plants directly from the soil (environmental) and not just via infected tubers
• Irrigation exacerbates environmental blackleg
• Free Living Nematodes enable blackleg organisms to enter potato plants

The project aims to develop new methods to control Pba and to make a major impact on the potato industry through uptake of these methods and of a new decision support tool.

The project, ‘Building a Decision Support Tool for Blackleg Disease (DeS-BL), which secured funding via the BBSRC call for work on Bacterial Diseases, began in early 2020. AHDB supported the application and will provide a ‘in-kind’ contribution to deliver Knowledge Exchange through our Farm Excellence Platform.

The aim of the project is to identify new ways to control blackleg disease through research undertaken in a number of work packages (any one of which could offer a new breakthrough in the treatment of blackleg), and then to use data from them, combined with other unique datasets, to develop a decision support tool(s) for use by industry.

The project comprises 5 interlinked work packages.

1. Vectors and transmission will investigate the putative role of FLN species and other insects as vectors or enhancers of Pba infections.

2. Current management practices seeks to develop effective irrigation regime which does not impact on either black-leg or common scab development. The impact of the increasing use of cover crops on Pba proliferation / dissemination will also be investigated.

3. The rhizosphere environment work here will utilise the latest genomics tools to determine how irrigation and cover crops are impacting on the microbiome around roots.

4. Modelling and decision support outcomes from completed work-packages, climate, spatiotemporal and machine-learning data will be brought together to develop a decision support tool to be tested by industry.

5. Implementation and practical application to allow testing the tool via stakeholder engagement and will include a bioeconomic analyses of the consequences of using the tool at a landscape level.  AHDB Potatoes will play a key part in the work package via interactions between the project and SPot Farms via the Farm Excellence Platform.