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nafex - [NAFEX] Pathogens inoculation during Pruning/making of Cuttings, and/or or during Grafting

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  • From: Heath Flax <8orge.onx@gmail.com>
  • To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [NAFEX] Pathogens inoculation during Pruning/making of Cuttings, and/or or during Grafting
  • Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 23:03:30 -0400

"Pathogens inoculation": ...hoping that terming things this way will
be acceptable as a (fancy) way of referring to something otherwise
maybe a little more negative-seeming--disease transfer or
"infection"...since, in my case, I'm trying, deliberately, to
"potentially" do that, but for positive reasons: am trying to expose
blueberry bushes to a specific disease, by means of doing something
similar to grafting, but more temporary.

Further background: basically, I'm sort of "nearly-grafting"lengthy
sections of stems from diseased blueberry plants onto nondiseased
blueberry plant branches. Am slicing off inch or more pieces,
lengthwise, about 1/3 depth into the healthy recipient plants' stems,
and attaching similar pieces of cut, diseased stems. The first year,
I tied the two respective components together with twist ties, and I
"think" that with some, I tried to seal things with, horribly enough,
car wax.
The second go-round a couple years later, I switched to another
undoubtedly non-ideal sealant: petroleum jelly (Vaseline type), and
also made the diseased donor stems long enough to allow sticking their
bottom ends into cups of water down on the ground (hoping to keep the
donor stems alive for quite a while, to assist in the would-be ,
wanted pathogens transfer.
In I think two instances, I was able to find a healthy blueberry plant
and a diseased blueberry plant close enough to one another to allow
directly/permanently doing this sort of semi-grafting (without having
to sever the stems of the donor plant).

Maybe amazingly, there "may" be, by now a couple more years later,
some successful resultant "taking" (or, "taking") of the fungus
involved, by some of the recipient plants.
And while I think it's very possible that there may be many more
"successful" (in an ironic way) "takes" which simply have yet to
overtly show same--that is, have yet to get to the stage wherein the
fungus shows in an obvious way--it does seem, so far, to be at least
"possibly" surprising that the possible infection rate that is visible
to see is just a few per cent, about 4 or 5 per cent I'd guess.
Why "surprising"? Well, basically (to me), because of the impression
I began, influenced heavily by repeatedly reading of stories of
massive disease infection due to lack of sterilization of pruning
tools...such as even, failure to sterilize "every single time between
pruning cuts." in some cases...if I didn't imagine this latter or if
I'm not somehow mentally exaggerating.

and so, finally, my question: how can it be that it is so hard to
deliberately inoculate (infect) plants with a disease--if diseases
seem to be so very very contagious by pruning cut or by use of
infected graft material?

(of course, for what it's worth, and in case it's not obvious--my
efforts at deliberate inoculation of healthy plants with fungal
pathogens, are for the purpose of trying to find resistance or
immunity in one or more subject blueberry plants
And also, naturally the blueberry disease I am dealing with, is one
considered what I understand is "completely" contagious,at least as
far as apparently is known: no known immune specimen yet).

Heath, z 5-6, Massachusetts



  • [NAFEX] Pathogens inoculation during Pruning/making of Cuttings, and/or or during Grafting, Heath Flax, 04/08/2009

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