Planta Med 2014; 80 - P2B85
DOI: 10.1055/s-0034-1394962

Characterization of structure, growth and production of volatiles of Solanum tuberosum hairy roots and Solanum tuberosum hairy roots/Meloidogyne chitwoodi in vitro co-cultures

J Faria 1, I Sena 1, CM Maleita 2, IV da Silva 1, L Ascensão 1, I Abrantes 3, RN Bennett 4, M Mota 5, 6, A Cristina Figueiredo 1
  • 1Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências de Lisboa, DBV, IBB, Centro de Biotecnologia Vegetal, C2, Campo Grande, 1749 – 016 Lisboa, Portugal
  • 2CIEPQPF, Departamento de Engenharia Química, Universidade de Coimbra, 3030 – 790 Coimbra, Portugal
  • 3IMAR-CMA, Departamento de Ciências da Vida, Universidade de Coimbra, 3004 – 517 Coimbra, Portugal
  • 4Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Quinta dos Prados – Apartado 1013, 5000 – 911 Vila Real, Portugal
  • 5NemaLab, ICAAM – Instituto de Ciências Agrárias e Ambientais Mediterrânicas, Universidade de Évora, Núcleo da Mitra, Ap. 94, 7002 – 554 Évora, Portugal
  • 6INIAV/Unidade Estratégica de Investigação e Serviços de Sistemas Agrários e Florestais e Sanidade Vegetal, Av. da República, Quinta do Marquês 2784 – 159 Oeiras, Portugal

Meloidogyne spp., commonly known as root-knot nematodes (RKNs), are economically important plant sedentary endoparasites that cause galls on susceptible hosts. The Columbia root-knot nematode (CRKN), M. chitwoodi, is a quarantine A2 type pest by the European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization (EPPO) since 1998. This nematode has been found associated with economically important crops such as potato and tomato, causing severe damage and making the agricultural products unacceptable for the fresh market and food processing. In vitro co-culture of host and parasite offers an advantageous experimental system for studying plant-RKN interactions. S. tuberosum hairy roots (HR) and of S. tuberosum HR/CRKN co-cultures were established and their structure, growth and production of volatiles compared. HR were induced by inoculation of aseptic potato tuber segments with Rhizobium rhizogenes. Co-cultures were initiated by inoculating HR with sterilized CRKN eggs. Infection with CRKN induced the RKN symptomatology in the HR and several nematode life stages were observed by light and scanning electron microscopy. Potato HR and HR/CRKN cocultures exhibited similar growth patterns, evaluated by measuring fresh and dry weight and by the dissimilation method. Volatiles, isolated by distillation-extraction and analyzed by GC and GC-MS, revealed that palmitic acid (37 – 52%), npentadecanal (10 – 16%) and linoleic acid (2 – 16%) were the main constitutive components of S. tuberosum HR, and of the HR/CRKN co-cultures (24 – 44, 822 and 4 – 18%, respectively). S. tuberosum HR/CRKN co-cultures can be considered a suitable biotechnological tool to study RKN infection mechanism by mimicking what occurs under field conditions.

Acknowledgements: Jorge Faria is grateful to the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) for the Ph.D. grant SFRH/BD/43738/2008. This study was partially funded by FCT, under PestOE/EQB/LA0023/2011 and research contract PTDC/AGR-CFL/117026/2010.

Keywords: Plant biotechnology, Columbia root-knot nematode, potato, hairy root structure, root gall structure, co-cultures, volatiles