We have recently scanned and added to our database many historic images of bacterial plant pathogen diseases.
The ICMP culture collection is very useful as a store of living cryo-preserved fungal and bacterial cultures. These can be used for experiments, or DNA extracted and genes or genomes sequenced as needed. But cultures of plant pathogens are abstracted from the disease that they cause, that’s why in the PDD Fungarium we store dried specimens of plant diseases, they show exactly what the symptoms of plant diseases look like.
We also have a filing cabinet full of photos taken of bacterial plant diseases (mostly taken in the 1960s), these were recently digitally scanned and loaded on to our databases, often they can be associated with a living culture in the ICMP collection.
Some examples are:
- Maize Bacterial Stalk Rot – Erwinia chrysanthemi pv. zeae
- Lettuce bacterial leaf spot and headrot – Xanthomonas hortorum pv. vitians
- Tomato bacterial speck disease – Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato
- Bean common bacterial blight – Xanthomonas axonopodis pv. phaseoli
- Pukatea bacterial leaf spot – Xanthomonas dyei pv. laureliae
These images are also available on the global GBIF website:
All of these images are licenced as “CC BY 4.0” which means they can be reused by anyone with attribution to Manaaki Whenua.
Dr Bevan Weir is the Research Leader for Mycology and Bacteriology systematics at New Zealand’s environment-focussed government research institute Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research. He is curator of New Zealand’s national culture collection of fungi and bacteria, the ICMP, and is a councillor of both the New Zealand and Australasian mycological societies.
Bevan’s research interests are systematics and genomics of plant pathogens, in particular the genus Colletotrichum; and has over 50 research papers published. He has had an active role in most of the major incursions of plant pathogens in New Zealand in the past decade, working closely with central government agencies.
In his spare time he also can’t get away from mycology and is either hunting mushrooms in the native forest or brewing craft beer.