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Problem with infected seeds

Yves Bertheau yves.bertheau at free.fr
Sun Feb 27 03:21:18 EST 2000


Hello,

I am not a specialits of maize diseases but have some general
brackground in Plant Pathology... First you should discuss with plant
pathologists of your neiborhing

Some maize fungi like smut are seeds transmitted so external
disinfection  is inefficient for these fungi.. But I hope there is no
smut for you, because it is a legal obligation to sell ceritified
seeds, thus without smut and other seeds transmitted fungi...
The fungicide to be employed depends on the fungus target
(molecular target and fungus taxonomy).

If your observations are true (infection starting from the embryo) you
are then contaminated by an endogenous (seeds transmitted) fungus...
Difficult to destroy, more easy to prevent by the use of systemic
fungicides on the seeds producing plants (but to late for you).

Moreover, you could have extemporaneaous contaminations during the
germination of your grains (are your soils sterilized?)...

Finally depending on the cultivar of maize your disinfection process
can be inefficient (waxes of the grains...)

Are you sure the infection starts from the embryos?

  You might use systemic treatments to protect your plant, it looks
inadequate for you as you are unable to to grow them

Finally purchase certified seeds, they shall be fungi free and
protected, if your research material is comercially available...


Hope it helps you

Yves Bertheau

INRA Versailles

On 21 Feb 2000 16:18:57 -0000, Helene.Corbiere at unibas.ch (HÈlËne
CorbiËre) wrote:

>Dear maize net users,
>
>I am a PhD student of Uta Paszkowski, from a lab in Basel, Switzerland, I'm
>working with seeds from sh1/sus1, Sh1/sus1, Sh1/Sus1 and sh1/Sus1 lines.
>For many months now, I'm stack in my experiments because we keep on having
>infected seeds so we cannot grow a single plant neither in the greenhouse
>nor in phytochamber,independent on sand or soil substrate. We have produced
>our own seeds in the greenhouse from individuals survivors but the seeds
>these plants produced were similarly infected. It appears that always the
>same fungus infects the embryo and starts to grow when the seeds are
>exposed to a moist environment. Surface sterilization and germination in
>fungicide leaves this fungus untouched. Since the first batch of seeds that
>we had obtained germinated and grew perfectly well we still hope to find a
>second source of this quality. We are honestly a bit desparate about how to
>solve this problem.
>
>Is there anybody knowing something about this type of infection of these
>particular seeds? Is anyone of you working on the same lines? May I ask you
>where I could find some non-infected seeds?
>
>Thanks in advance
>Best regards
>Helene Corbiere
>
>
>---






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