REVIEW article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Pathogen Interactions
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1610049
Inoculum and Inoculation Techniques: Key Steps in Studying Pathogenicity and Resistance to Sclerotinia stem rot in Oilseed rape
Provisionally accepted
- 1Julius Kühn-Institute, Institute for Plant Protection in Field crops and Grassland, Braunschweig, Germany
- 2Institute of Genetics and Animal Biotechnology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Magdalenka, Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland
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Sclerotinia sclerotiorum is a soilborne and necrotrophic fungal pathogen that causes substantial yield and economic losses in oilseed rape cultivation worldwide. To date, no immune oilseed rape germplasm has been identified, posing a major challenge for breeding resistance breeding against to Sclerotinia stem rot. Developing reliable assessment techniques to evaluate oilseed rape resistance to the disease is a critical step in investigating genetic control and producing resistant cultivars. Extensive evaluations of oilseed rape genotypes have been conducted under both field and controlled conditions to assess resistance to Sclerotinia stem rot. Most inoculation techniques employ mycelium or mycelium-colonized substrates such as agar plugs, cereal grains, toothpicks, or petals. The use of ascospores as inoculum has been less common, despite their important role in the natural infection cycle. Several inoculation methodologies for controlled environments have been developed and evaluated for screening oilseed rape germplasm, including detached leaf/stem assays, intact leaf assays, cotyledon screening, as well as petiole and leaf axil inoculation. In parallel, several methods have been developeddesigned to assess Sclerotinia resistance under field conditions, such as intact stem inoculation at the flowering or maturity stage using infested toothpicks, spraying ascospore suspensions onto plants, and spreading Sclerotinia-infested wheat grains. Moreover, Tthis review explores the suitability of various S. sclerotiorum inoculum sourcestypes and evaluates the most common inoculation techniques for effective identification of susceptible and resistant oilseed rape genotypes to Sclerotinia stem rot.Sclerotinia sclerotiorum (Lib.) de Bary is a soilborne, necrotrophic, and omnivorous fungal plant pathogen capable of infecting more than 450 plant species, including oilseed rape (Boland and Hall,
Keywords: Brassica napus, Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, cotyledon inoculation, intact stem inoculation, Detached leaf assay, detached stem assay, Sclerotinia disease incidence and severity
Received: 11 Apr 2025; Accepted: 17 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zamani-Noor and Jedryczka. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Nazanin Zamani-Noor, Julius Kühn-Institute, Institute for Plant Protection in Field crops and Grassland, Braunschweig, Germany
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