HR matching - molecular pathotyping of parasitic nematodes to maximize agronomic life span of non-hosts and host plant resistances

Fertile arable soils are a precious and very basic commodity as the production of food, feed and fiber almost completely depends on their proper biological functioning. Large-scale mono-crop production systems provide hundreds of millions of people with food at an affordable price, but they are highly vulnerable to plant pathogens. Soil-borne plant pathogens have been controlled for decades by nonselective fumigants with a highly negative impact on human health and the environment. In most parts of the world, the use of these generic biocides is either severely restricted or fully banned, hence there is an urgent need for alternative control handles. Root parasitic roundworms (‘nematodes’) are by far the most urgent threat to food production. Due to peculiarities of their biology (e.g. low dispersal rates, low number of generations per year), host and non-host resistances constitute a remarkably durable way to manage this category of soil-borne diseases. Host plant resistances are available, but no tools are available to match pathogen populations (“pathotypes” or “races”) with the right host plant resistances. The goal of this project is to develop affordable, high-throughput DNA-based assays for the identification of pathotypes and races of four major plant-parasitic nematode species, a prerequisite for the right matching between pathogens and available host plants resistances.