The Crop Protection Division of the
Agricultural Research Council Roodeplaat Vegetable and Ornamental Plants
(ARC-VOP, Roodeplaat) has implemented a national assets project, to ensure
maintenance and genetic characterisation of national assets, including insects,
fungi, bacteria and viruses. The aim of
the project is to maintain records of all microbiological and insect
collections, and to genetically characterise the organisms. The genebank consists of one susceptible
potato tuber moth colony, which has been reared without exposure to any
chemicals in the past twenty years. It
is the only ‘susceptible’ potato tuber moth (PTM) colony in South Africa. The PTM is of tremendous value to the potato
industry since it can be used to determine the efficacy of registered chemicals
for the control of potato tuber moth. The
most important mycology accessions are 32 Alternaria species associated
with (Alternaria Blight of sweet potato), 10 Alternaria alternata
associated with onion, and 51 Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. associated with Fusarium
wilt of sweet potato. The most
important bacterial accessions are 360 Streptomyces species associated with
common scab and fissure scab of potato.
Virus infected plants are maintained as in vivo infected plants
in the glasshouse.
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