Hello,
I need to infect my plants with powdery mildew to check if they become more susceptible to the infection. Currently in my lab, we just drop spores and try to do it as evenly as possible. But I think it should be a more accurate method to infect plants. Do you know any protocols? Also, how do you check the results of the infection?
That's pretty much what everyone else does. These references might help.
Good luck
Article Correlation of defense gene induction defects with powder mi...
Article Rapid quantification of plant-powdery mildew interactions by...
Unsure of literature, but (1) suspending the spores in a mild detergent like Silwett 77 (like they use for floral dip transformation of Arabidopsis) and spraying evenly on all plant surfaces would be more useful. (2) Lesion measurements (chlorosis or local necrosis) events followed by microscopy of fungal hyphae spread in the leaf sections using methylene blue or similar fungal wall staining would be more easier way to report results of infection as a primary evidence, other molecular and biochemical tests may follow as well.
We don't use water for inoculation with powdery mildew as conidia break down in water. We use a inoculation tower for 'sedimentation' of the conidia in case we want to have inoculation done in a quantitative way. This is a simple method and works fine. Some people use a spray with conidia in water followed by high temperatures to dry the plants asap. I don't like this method very much.
Results we check by scoring area of leaf surface covered with mycelium and/or by scoring the sporulation or by plant responses in the leaves.
You can find details in our publications, for example: Moghaddam Hosseini H; Dewitte A; Van Bockstaele E; Van Huylenbroeck J & Leus L. 2014. Roses Exhibit Pathotype-specific Resistance Responses to Powdery Mildew JOURNAL OF PHYTOPATHOLOGY 162: 107-115
Forget about dispersing spores in a fluid or using water. The simplest method is the best. Use a settling tower, which you can build yourself within a few hours. It is important to have at the top of the tower a mixing chamber, where the spores become first mixed with air and then immediately pushed into the tower using a piston. I always get a very uniform distribution at the bottom, not differing significantly from the expected Poisson distribution.
See also Aslam and Schwarzbach, an Inoculation technique etc. among my Researchgate contributions.
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