Development of a Multiplex PCR system for multi-pathogen detection in alfalfa plants

JAIME CAMILA; GIECO JORGE; JAUREGUI JOSÉ; DUNGER, GERMÁN

Salta

Congreso; LV Annual SAIB Meeting and XIV PABMB Congress; 2019

SAIB

Alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) is a perennial legume plant, also known as queen of forages due to its high content of minerals and vitamins. In addition, it has 22% of its weight in proteins, which makes alfalfa an excellent forage for animal feed. Nevertheless, numerous diseases affect this plant. In Argentina, around 20 different diseases have been found in the last years. This leads not only to economic losses, also to a decrease in the soil?s quality, more predisposition to pests, etc. Argentina is the second largest producer of alfalfa in the world, with a cultivated area of more than 3.2M hectares. Due to the importance of this crop in our country, an efficient mechanism of detection of pathogens is needed. This will lead to an improvement in the management of the crop and will facilitate the control of pests. Therefore, we developed a multiplex PCR procedure which will rapidly and simultaneously detect the presence of the most important fungal and bacterial pathogens in alfalfa plants. Fifteen samples of alfalfa plants were collected from different regions of the province of Santa Fe (Argentina) and were used to calibrate the multiplex PCR protocol. Moreover, Geographical Information System (GIS) was used to provide a representation and helps to the integration of the information collected from the PCRs results. Taken together, these results will facilitate the management of alfalfa crops by rural producers and the multiplex PCR technology could be used for multi-pathogen detection all over the world.