A real-time PCR assay was developed to quantify in soil the fungus Hirsutella minnesotensis, an important parasite of secondary-stage juvenile (J2) of the soybean cyst nematode. A primer pair 50-GGGAGGCCCGGTGGA-30 and 50-TGATCCGAGGTCAACTTCTGAA-30 and a TaqMan probe 50-CGTCCGCCGTAAAACGCCCAAC-30 were designed based on the sequence of the ITS region of the rRNA gene. The primers were highly specie...

Trophic interactions of introduced biocontrol fungi with soil animals can bea key determinant in the fungal proliferation and activity.This study investigated trophic interaction of an introduced biocontrol fungus with soil nematodes. The biocontrol fungusTrichoderma harzianum ThzID1-M3 and the fungivorous nematode Aphelenchoides sp. (10 per gram of soil) were added to nonsterile soil, and micr...

Plants lack the seemingly unlimited receptor diversity of a somatic adaptive immune system as found in vertebrates and rely on only a relatively small set of innate immune receptors to resist a myriad of pathogens. Here, we show that disease-resistant tomato plants use an efficient mechanism to leverage the limited nonself recognition capacity of their innate immune system. We found that the ex...

The sensitivities of acetylcholinesterases (ACHE) from the fungus-feeder Aphelenchus avenae and the plant-parasitic species Helicotylenchus dihystera and Pratylenchus penetrans and the housefly, Musca domestica, were compared using a radiometric assay which utilized H(3) acetylcholine as a substrate. Nematode ACHE were generally less sensitive to inhibition by organophosphorns and carbamate pes...

Individual nematodes were isolated from American chestnut blight-controlled cankers to determine if they were carriers of biocontrol (hypovirulent) isolates of the chestnut blight fungus, Cryphonectria parasitica. These hypovirulent isolates have a white fungal colony phenotype due to infection by the virus CHV1. Of 1,620 individual Aphelenchoides hylurgi isolated, 29.4% carried propagules of t...

Biological control of animal parasites could become a strong arm for Integrated Parasite Control in the very near future. Though various nematode-destroying fungi received attention, predominantly on academic interest, from the 18th Century in Scandinavian countries, work on their application to control animal parasites gathered momentum from 1990's. The philosophy behind biological control is ...

An isolate of the nematode-trapping fungus Monacrosporium drechsleri was collected from cultures of the root-knot nematode Meloidogyne arenaria that had been maintained on tomato roots in greenhouse pots in Beltsville, Maryland. The plant-parasitic nematodes Heterodera glycines, Meloidogyne incognita and Pratylenchus zeae and the free-living nematodes Caenorhabditis elegans and Panagrellus redi...

The rice white tip nematode, Aphelenchoides besseyi, is the primarily important seed-borne pest of rice and was first recorded in Turkey in 1995. These biological agents, such as an entomopathogenic fungus (EPF), entomopathogenic nematodes (EPN), and bacterial supernatants, have been used against other plant parasitic nematodes but as far as not against A. besseyi. Accordingly, the EPF species,...

Nematode population trends and vertical distribution were monitored in a southwest Michigan vineyard (Vitis labrusca cv. Concord) from 1976 through 1983. Shallow (20 cm) and deep (90 cm) applications of 1,3-dichloropropene applied at 281 (shallow) plus 658 or 1,122 (deep) liters/ ha provided excellent control of Xiphinema americanum, Criconemella xenoplax, and Meloidogyne hapla. Populations of ...

The in vitro effects of abscisic acid (ABA) and nitric oxide (NO) on the nematode-trapping fungus Drechslerella stenobrocha AS6.1 were examined. The average number of traps (constricting rings) per colony and the percentage of nematodes (Caenorhabditis elegans) trapped were greatly increased by addition of ABA but greatly suppressed by addition of sodium nitroprusside (SNP, an NO donor) to corn...