Project Number: 5352-22000-016-05
Project Type: Specific Cooperative Agreement

Start Date: Sep 04, 2007
End Date: Jun 30, 2009

Objective:
Objectives of this research are to evaluate insecticides registered for aphid control for the reduction of PVY transmission under field conditions, investigate the vector potential of the bird cherry-oat aphid and compare it with the vector potential of the green peach aphid, and determine whether hairy nightshade plants might play an important role as potential inoculum source for the virus in the field.

Approach:
Field potato plots will be used to determine the efficiency of different insecticide treatments at reducing PVY virus transmission. Infected viruliferous aphids of two species will be released on each plot prior to applying the insecticides. ELISA tests will be conducted three times during the season and winter tests will also be performed on harvested tubers of each treatment. We hypothesize that the least amount of infection will be due to the effectiveness of insecticides. Also for the spatial and temporal disease distribution from the infectious PVY foci we will use tagged potato plants for scheduled ELISA analyses. Treatments will include placing two PVYO inoculum sources (potato and hairy nightshade plants) and two aphid vectors (green peach or bird cherry-oat aphids). All treatments will be protected with cages which will impede the entrance and escape of any aphid and therefore will avoid transmission of PVY from external sources. We hypothesize that differences in virus infection will be due to the inoculum source and the vector species. Documents SCA with U of ID.