Pathozone dynamics of Meloidogyne incognita in the rhizosphere of tomato plants in the presence and absence of the nematophagous fungus, Pochonia chlamydosporia

Abstract

Pathozone dynamics were derived for approx. 50 Meloidogyne incognita juveniles infecting a single root of tomato under controlled conditions from a point source of inoculum and described using simple, non-linear models. The pathozone decayed sigmoidally with distance, but increased over time as progressively more nematodes were able to infect the root. Despite the reported ability of M. incognita juveniles to travel up to 50 cm in some conditions, the maximum width of the pathozone for a single tomato root was estimated as 18.1 mm. It is conjectured that this was because of (i) diffusion from a point source of inoculum, (ii) a small infection court (a single root tip) and (iii) the limited life span of the nematode. A second experiment was used to assess the effect of the nematophagous fungus Pochonia chlamydosporia on the pathozone dynamics of the nematode. This fungus is known to produce nematicidal products in vitro, which may affect invasion of roots by the free-living nematode. To examine the possibility of a change in the position of the site of infection, changes in the probability of gall formation along the root length were also examined. In the absence of P. chlamydosporia, the pathozone dynamics of M. incognita were very similar to those of the first experiment. It was shown that P. chlamydosporia did not significantly affect the pathozone dynamics of M. incognita nor the site of gall formation, which appear to have little importance for the role of the fungus as a biological control agent. © 2007 The Authors.