Estimados colegas:

Estare enviandoles en tres o cuatro mensajes, el contenido de Global Iniciative on Late Blight, anunciado por el Centro Internacional de la Papa.

Alberto Gonzalez

Moderador INFOPAPA

Global Initiative on Late Blight

GILB NEWSLETTER

Number 1, December 1996

Contents

Introduction 1

The Global Initiative on Late Blight: A call to join 2 PICTIPAPA Board Meeting 9

An eight-member Steering Committee for GILB established Commitments of funding for GILB Cornell-Eastern Europe-Mexico (CEEM) International Collaborative Project in Potato Late Blight Control Progress in SIFT Coming Meetings

Introduction

One of the objectives of the Global Initiative on Late Blight (GILB) is to increase communication and cooperation among persons and organizations interested in combating the world’s most important crop disease. The GILB Newsletter, of which this is the first issue, will contribute to this objective by providing updates on events, plans, observations and opportunities of interest to late blight workers.

The GILB newsletter is formatted in a simple way for distribution primarily by electronic mail. It is being distributed to the list of more than 300 "GILBers" currently on our list (the GILB INFONET). Please let us know if there are others who might like to receive the GILB Newsletter.

We expect to produce the newsletter two to three times per year. We would like to solicit your comments and contributions to the newsletter.

Relevant material would include:

· New developments and updates on initiatives and projects concerning late blight

· Announcements of events such as meetings, workshops, and electronic conferences

· Observations and statistics on disease occurrence around the world

· Information on varietal performance

· Brief (1 paragraph) synopses of research results and/or publications Please send material for publication to Ed French at CIP. Thank you very much for your support. E-mail : e.french@cgnet.com Fax : 51-1-436-6920.

The Global Initiative on Late Blight:

A Call to Join

Background

One hundred and fifty years have passed since the Reverend Miles Joseph

Berkeley (1846) wrote his classic paper in the Journal of the Horticultural

Society of London recognizing the "potato murrain" fungus as the cause of

the disease and not as its consequence. Phytopathology was thus initiated

as a scientific discipline. Seventeen years later, Heinrich Anton de Bary

appropriately renamed it the "plant eater" or Phytophthora (Parris, 1968).

Unfortunately, P. infestans continues to be the ravenous plant destroyer.

James (1981) reported that of the world’s major food crops, potatoes were

subject to the highest percentage loss to diseases (mainly late blight),

21.8 percent. Late blight is held at bay principally by the use of

fungicides, aided by some mildly effective cultural practices and modest

levels of general resistance. Race-specific resistance was of limited use,

because pathogen populations rapidly overcame single-gene resistance. This

highly variable fungus, with 90 recorded hosts, has remained "a major threat

to world food production" (Erwin and Ribeiro, 1996).

The profitability of investing in introducing and promoting late blight

resistant varieties was clearly shown during a 15-year period in East

Africa, where CIP and its partners invested $5.6 million in deploying

resistant potato clones. The net benefits to farmers have reached $10

million per year, an annual rate of return of 91 percent (Walker and

Crissman, 1996).

The situation has become worse. New biotypes of P. infestans are being

disseminated worldwide, constituting one of the most serious threats since

the 1840s devastating famine. The current second wave of strain migrations,

which hat began in the late 1970s, involves both the A1 and A2 mating types,

and is progressively displacing the less fit and less aggressive A1 strains

of the migration that occurred a century and a half ago. The joint presence

of both mating types can lead to the formation of thick-walled, resistant

resting oospores. These can survive in soil for up to 8 months and thus

serve as inoculum to initiate disease at plant emergence, earlier than is

usual with airborne sporangia. Oospores, as products of a sexual phase, are

also a source of greater variability in a heretofore already variable

fungus. Furthermore, a greater frequency of resistance to the most effective

fungicide (metalaxyl) occurs among the new biotypes (Erwin and Ribeiro,

1996; Fry et al., 1993).

Organization

The Global Initiative on Late Blight (GILB) was formalized at the Project

Design Meeting (PDM) organized by CIP and sponsored by CIP and PDM

participants. Held March 17-20, 1996, the PDM was attended by 53

participants from 19 countries of Africa, Asia, the Americas (North,

Central, and South), Europe, and Southeast Asia. The objective of the

meeting was to establish project priorities, develop work plans, and set up

a method of governance for GILB. The meeting report, entitled "Enhancing the

Global Late Blight Network" (French and Mackay, 1996; available upon request

from E. French), provides detailed summaries of discussions in four areas:

1) variation and epidemiology of P. infestans; 2) genetics of host-pathogen

interaction; 3) breeding and molecular approaches for host-plant resistance;

and 4) governance.

Participants assigned the highest priority to developing host-plant

resistance for use in integrated disease management programs, and to

establishing a standardized international varietal testing program (a module

of PICTIPAPA, referred to later).

Management

The governance working group recommended that CIP convene and coordinate the

initiative, a proposal that was later approved by the assembly. The group

also suggested that a steering committee of at least six selected

individuals of international stature, representing both developed and

developing countries, be established.

CIP designated its Associate Director for Research to provide CIP management

support to GILB under the direction of CIP’s Deputy Director General for

Research. The three initial members of the steering committee were named:

William E. Fry of Cornell University, Peter Gregory of CIP, and George R.

Mackay of the Scottish Crop Research Institute. They were charged with

expanding the committee to at least six by seeking representation from

developing countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America and additional

industrialized nations.

GILB was charged with stimulating, integrating, and coordinating research

and development on late blight; assisting in developing common efforts that

will require funding; and establishing and facilitating the global late

blight network.

The GILB program components were defined as activities and projects that are

:

a. Priority efforts to be partially or fully funded by GILB through CIP,

as grants-in-aid, contracts, or joint efforts with support in kind.

b. Significant contributions to the global late blight network that have

their own support (or can acquire it with endorsement from the GILB steering

committee).

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