Evaluation of a decision making tools based on RT-PCR real time in sclerotinia stem rot control in oilseed rape

摘要

Preventive fungicide spray was systematically applied to control sclerotinia stem rot in oilseed rape until the late nineties. As Sclerotinia stem rot causes important yield losses once or twice every ten years only, many of the applied fungicide sprays are useless. In order to reduce the application of chemicals and its negative impact on the environment, a Petri dish based petal test was developed by CETIOM for rapid estimation of the percentage of infected flowers. A new set of experiments was carried out in 2006 in order to evaluate the interest of a real time PCR test developed by Cambrex Bio Science Clermont-Ferrand in comparison with the Petri dish based test. The sensitivity and specificity of both tests were evaluated by using disease incidence measurements obtained at harvest. Results of about one hundred samples of flowers demonstrated equivalency between the two test methods with respect to performance. According to these results, we intend to substitute the molecular biology based method to the Petri dish based test in our decision making scheme in order to save time in the analysis of oilseed rape flowers.