Botrytis cinerea in vivo Inoculation Assays for Early-, Middle- and Late-stage Strawberries.

Content Provider	Europe PMC
Author	Yang, Piao Zhao, Zhenzhen Virag, Aleksandra Becker, Todd Zhao, Lijing Liu, Wenshan Xia, Ye
Copyright Year	2023
Abstract	Strawberries are delicious and nutritious fruits that are widely cultivated and consumed around the world, either fresh or in various products such as jam, juice, and ice cream. Botrytis cinerea is a fungal pathogen that causes gray mold disease on many crops, including strawberries. Disease monitoring is an important aspect for growing commercial crops like strawberry because there is an urgent need to develop effective strategies to control this destructive gray mold disease. In this protocol, we provide an important tool to monitor the gray mold fungal infection progression in different developmental stages of strawberry. There are different types of inoculation assays for B. cinerea on strawberry plants, such as in vitro (in/on a culture medium) or in vivo (in a living plant). In vivo inoculation assays can be performed at early, middle, and late stages of strawberry development. Here, we describe three methods for in vivo inoculation assays of B. cinerea on strawberry plants. For early-stage strawberry plants, we modified the traditional fungal disc inoculation method to apply to fungal infection on strawberry leaves. For middle-stage strawberry plants, we developed the flower infection assay by dropping fungal conidia onto flowers. For late-stage strawberry plants, we tracked the survival rate of strawberry fruits after fungal conidia infection. This protocol has been successfully used in both lab and greenhouse conditions. It can be applied to other flowering plants or non-model species with appropriate modifications. Key features • Fungal disc inoculation on early-stage strawberry leaves. • Fungal conidia inoculation on middle-stage strawberry flowers. • Disease rating for late-stage strawberry fruits. • This protocol is applicable to the other flowering plants with appropriate modifications.
Related Links	https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC10603257&blobtype=pdf
Volume Number	13
PubMed Central reference number	PMC10603257
Issue Number	20
PubMed reference number	37900101
Journal	Bio-protocol [Bio Protoc]
e-ISSN	23318325
DOI	10.21769/bioprotoc.4859
Language	English
Publisher	Bio-Protocol
Publisher Date	2023-10-20
Publisher Place	1075 Lorne Way, Sunnyvale, CA 94087, USA
Access Restriction	Open
Rights License	This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). ©Copyright : © 2023 The Authors; This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license
Subject Keyword	Strawberry Leaf inoculation Flower inoculation Gray mold disease Botrytis cinerea Fungal disc inoculation Fungal conidia inoculation Flowering plants Non-model species Commercial crops
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Immunology and Microbiology Neuroscience Plant Science Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology