The 22 vegetable crop seedlings that became infected and developed symptoms of the disease in the study are: beet, carrot, eggplant, green bean, lima bean, radish, snow pea, spinach, Swiss-chard, tomato, turnip, onion, pepper and a long list of vine vegetables including pumpkin, cantaloupe, cucumber, gourd, honeydew melon, muskmelon, squash, watermelon and zucchini.

The incidence of fruit rot on pumpkins caused by P.capsici has dramatically increased in Illinois, causing yield losses of up to 100 percent. "Jack-o-lantern pumpkin is an important crop in Illinois, and approximately 90 percent of the commercial processing pumpkin produced in the United States are grown in Illinois," Babadoost said. "So this is an economic problem for the state."

Babadoost and Donglan Tian, a graduate student in crop sciences, completed the study, which appears in the May issue of Plant Disease, a journal of the American Phytopathological Society. The research was supported in part by funds from North Central Region Sustainable Agriculture, Research and Education, the Illinois Department of Agriculture and Nestle Food Inc.

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Contact: Debra Levey Larson
dlarson@uiuc.edu
217-244-2880
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
10-May-2004