The prevalence of Phytophthora in British plant nurseries : high-risk hosts and substrates and opportunities to influence practice

Green, Sarah and Cooke, David E.L. and Barwell, Louise and Purse, Bethan and Cock, Peter and Frederickson-Matika, Debra and Randall, Eva and Keillor, Beatrix and Pritchard, Leighton and Thorpe, Peter and Pettit, Tim and Schlenzig, Alexandra and Barbrook, Jane (2024) The prevalence of Phytophthora in British plant nurseries : high-risk hosts and substrates and opportunities to influence practice. Plant Pathology. ISSN 1365-3059 (In Press)

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Abstract

Invasive Phytophthora spp. infect a very broad range of herbaceous and woody hosts globally. The UK alone has experienced a particularly damaging series of outbreaks and epidemics of new, invasive Phytophthora species affecting the nation’s trees over the last thirty years. The link between these Phytophthora outbreaks and the importation and spread of infected nursery stock is well established across many countries. To understand better how and where Phytophthora spreads in the nursery trade in Britain, we applied a standardised nursery sampling method combined with a refined metabarcoding detection method to capture as wide a diversity of Phytophthora species as possible at 134 British plant nurseries over multiple sampling years between 2016 and 2022. This included root and water samples collected from 17 nurseries sampled at a fine-scale and root samples collected from 117 nurseries sampled at a broad-scale. Based on analyses of 1894 pooled samples, 85 unique Phytophthora species or complexes were detected, with variation in pathogen detections across nurseries. We also identified prevalent and novel host-Phytophthora associations, surprisingly high-risk hosts (such as Douglas fir) with the greatest number of Phytophthora associations and revealed Phytophthora nursery niche preferences. We discuss the implications of these finding in terms of understanding and recognising pathogen diversity and abundance, high-risk hosts and Phytophthora species, and outline how information arising from this project has been disseminated, resulting in changes in nursery practice to reduce risk.

ORCID iDs

Green, Sarah, Cooke, David E.L., Barwell, Louise, Purse, Bethan, Cock, Peter ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9513-9993, Frederickson-Matika, Debra, Randall, Eva, Keillor, Beatrix, Pritchard, Leighton ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8392-2822, Thorpe, Peter, Pettit, Tim, Schlenzig, Alexandra and Barbrook, Jane;

Persistent Identifier

https://doi.org/10.17868/strath.00091307
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)