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Gene Flow of Phytophthora infestans Between Refuse Piles, and Organic and Conventional Potato Fields in Southern Flevoland, The Netherlands

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Abstract

Phytophthora infestans causes late blight, a devastating disease of potato and tomato. Previous work in the Netherlands showed that the population is highly diverse due to sexual reproduction and that oospores can overwinter in the soil. We sequenced archived DNA from multiple nuclear and mitochondrial loci from P. infestans sampled in 1994 from 17 conventional and 5 organic potato fields and 7 potato refuse pile sites in the Southern Flevoland. We assessed the genealogical history using sequences from two regions of the single-copy nuclear ras gene (intron 1 and exons 3–6) and several mitochondrial loci (P3-rpl14, rpl5 and tRNAs and P4-cox1) from 83 isolates. There were 10 heterozygous sites in the ras gene and 12 in the mitochondrial genes that were phylogenetically informative. Five nuclear and 5 mitochondrial haplotypes were shared among fields and several unique haplotypes were found. Nucleotide diversity and population mean mutation rates (θW) were higher in samples from refuse piles and organic fields than conventional fields for both nuclear and mitochondrial loci. Subdivision was observed between conventional fields and refuse piles. Migration analysis suggested that gene flow may have occurred first from conventional potato fields to organic fields and then to refuse piles. Recent mutations were found in rare lineages from organic fields. Ancestral mutations in mitochondrial loci were derived from samples from refuse piles documenting the importance of refuse piles as a source of inoculum for late blight epidemics in the organic and conventional fields.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank M. J. Zwankhuizn and J. C. Zadoks for sharing DNA samples archived from the field tests. Special thanks to former research staff (Rays Jiang, Rob Weide, and Peter van de Vondervoort) in Francine Govers lab for their assistance as the last author visited and sampled the DNA archives.

Funding

This work was funded from a grant number 2006–55319-16550 awarded by the USDA NRI.

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  1. Chia-Hui Hu

    Present address: Department Entomology & Plant Pathology, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, 36847, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department Entomology & Plant Pathology, North Carolina State University, 840 Oval Drive, Raleigh, Box 7625, 27606, USA

    Chia-Hui Hu, Ignazio Carbone & Jean Beagle Ristaino

  2. Laboratory of Phytopathology, and Centre for BioSystems Genomics, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Francine Govers

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  1. Chia-Hui Hu
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Correspondence to Jean Beagle Ristaino.

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Hu, CH., Govers, F., Carbone, I. et al. Gene Flow of Phytophthora infestans Between Refuse Piles, and Organic and Conventional Potato Fields in Southern Flevoland, The Netherlands. Potato Res. 66, 701–721 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11540-022-09597-2

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