Soil microbes to control plant diseases

Transcription

1 Soil microbes to control plant diseases Appolinaire Adandonon National Institute For Agro-Environmental Sciences, NIAES, Tsukuba, Japan

2 Outline - Self introduction and Benin country -Why am I doing research? And Why in Japan? - Current research activities - Acknowledgements and photos

3 Self introduction Name: Appolinaire Adandonon, PhD Major: Microbiology and Plant Pathology Focus: How to minimize plant disease damages Country of origin: Benin.

4 World Maps and Country Profiles JAPA AFRICA Regions of the World

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6 Burkina Faso Republic Niger Republic Togo Republic Federal Republic of Nigeria Flag -12 Prefectures - Area: km2 (about 1/3 Japan area)

7 Benin (Dahomey): History and politics Kingdom: French Colony: Independency: 1960 Democratic Regime: Since 1990.model of democratization in West Africa

8 Education in Benin - Primary school: 6 years - Secondary school I (Junior high school): 4 years - Secondary school II (Senior high school): 3 years - University - My education

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10 Population: about Ethnic groups: 45 Currency: FCFA

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12 Natural resources Water fall - Game reserves

13 Natural resources Possotome landscape Natural mineral water

14 Natural resources Lakes Lagoons, and sea

15 Livestock Fishing Poultry keeping

16 Palm oil: Benin as large exporter of the crop

17 Cotton as cash crop. It represents more than 80% of the total export.

18 Coconut grown for oil production

19 Corn/Maize as main staple crop. It is consumed as dough, porridge, boiled seeds, etc.

20 Rice

21 Yams Cassava Sweet potato

22 Cowpea, Vigna unguiculata, one of main legume crops produced in Benin, followed by soybean

23 Why am I interested in doing research? Since high school, always interested in research results reported during lecturing. One excited research I learnt during my undergraduate studies is the one leading to the birth of Plant pathology (from the Irish Potato Famine : )

24 During the famine, a million Irish people died of starvation or disease. No solution!! By this time, the microbe associated with sick plants were considered a product of the disease and not the cause. Most scientists believed in spontaneous generation of life

25 Assumption: extra water and cool weather made potatoes sick. But very strange is: the disease did not go away when the weather returned to more normal conditions in the following years. Why?

26 Anton debary (1861) research: kept potato plants in cold, wet conditions. Some plants were inoculated with the fungus and others not. Results: only inoculated plants were sick Later, Robert Koch (1876) developed a method now known as Koch s Postulates (proof of pathogenicity) These researchers are cited as references.

27 Why doing research in Japan? - African scientific experiences behind - Have experiences in a country other than African countries. Japan was my first choice because during my PhD studies, I have been in contact with Dr Ikuko Okabe. We applied for JSPS fellowship program and it was successful. - Dr Okabe is my host researcher

28 JSPS = Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science JSPS for Japanese to conduct research in Japan or in foreign countries JSPS for foreigners to carry out research in Japan (maximum 2 years) Myself, I have got two-year JSPS fellowship and came to Japan on November 30, 2005.

29 Current research activities Study of soil microbes under flooding conditions to control root disease in soybean Reasons: - Crops are important for human being - Unfortunately crops are attacked by insect and diseases

30 Disease symptoms

31 Chemicals to control plant diseases:potential harmful effects on human health and environment (Demoz and Korsten, 2006)

32 Microbe to control the fungus: as an alternative to pesticides

33 Recently, flooding is shown to reduce the damages caused by harmful microbes in soybean. Questions: which process or beneficial microbes lead to these results?

34 Materials and Methods - Soil inoculated with the pathogen -Flooding for one month - Greenhouse and field experiments

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36 Field experiment

37 DNA extraction from the fungus PCR - DGGE and species identification Which ones as beneficial microbes?

38 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Japan Government Japanese Society for Promotion of Sciences (JSPS) and JSPS /JISTEC staff NIAES for hosting the project Dr N Matsumoto, group leader Dr I Okabe, my JSPS host researcher