Numerous pathogenic or parasitic organisms attack plant roots to obtain nutrients, and the apoplast including the plant cell wall is where the plant cell meets such organisms. Root parasitic angiosperms and nematodes are two distinct types of plant root parasites but share some common features in their strategies for breaking into plant roots. Striga and Orobanche are obligate root parasitic an...

Roger Gordon is a Professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland. He received his Honours B.Sc. (Zoology) and Ph.D. (Zoology) from the University of Sheffield, England, specializing in the areas of entomology and parasitology. He teaches courses in entomology, parasitology, animal physiology, general zoology, and introductory biology. His research interests include the study of host-parasite ...

Effects of live and dead (heat-killed) infective juveniles (IJs) of the entomopathogenic nematode Steinernema carpocapsae on nematodes associated with boxwood Buxus spp. were evaluated in field experiments during 1999 and 2000. Both living and dead IJs of S. carpocapsae were equally effective, causing more than 50% reduction in total populations of plant-parasitic nematodes relative to the cont...

Organic amendments have been widely used for management of plant-parasitic nematodes. Relatively rapid declines in nematode population levels may occur when decomposing materials release toxic compounds, while longer-term effects might include increases in nematode antagonists. Improved crop nutrition and plant growth following amendment use may lead to tolerance of plant-parasitic nematodes. R...

Brassica plants once incorporated into soil as green manures have recently been shown to have biofumigant properties and have the potential of controlling plant-parasitic nematodes. In Washington State, plant-parasitic nematodes are successfully managed with synthetic nematicides. However, some of the synthetic nematicides became unavailable recently or their supply is limited leaving growers w...

Inference of evolutionary relationships between nematodes is severely hampered by their conserved morphology, the high frequency of homoplasy, and the scarcity of phylum-wide molecular data. To study the origin of nematode radiation and to unravel the phylogenetic relationships between distantly related species, 339 nearly full-length small-subunit rDNA sequences were analyzed from a diverse ra...

Parasitic nematodes infect hundreds of millions of people and farmed livestock. Further, plant parasitic nematodes result in major crop damage. The pipeline of therapeutic compounds is limited and parasite resistance to the existing anthelmintic compounds is a global threat. We have developed an INVertebrate Automated Phenotyping Platform (INVAPP) for high-throughput, plate-based chemical scree...

A survey was conducted to determine the assemblage and abundance of plant-parasitic nematodes and their associations with soil factors in organically farmed fields in Minnesota. A total of 31 soil samples were collected from southeast (SE), 26 samples from southwest (SW), 28 from west-central (WC), and 23 from northwest (NW) Minnesota. The assemblage and abundance of plant-parasitic nematodes v...