Artificial inoculation is required for most studies of cereal rust diseases. The techniques used to inoculate Puccinia triticina Eriks., the causal agent of wheat leaf rust, have been successfully employed for decades without many alterations. Field experiments are often exposed to natural as well as artificial infection. Greenhouse experiments are usually limited by space, particularly if inoculations are conducted on adult plants. Multiple genes present in a cultivar can be differentiated by inoculating the cultivar with different races. This is usually done by inoculating one set of plants with one race and a second set with a second race. A technique was developed to inoculate two or more P. triticina races on a single plant, which saved time, growing space and effort. The difference between rust inoculations with a single race and the double-inoculation technique is that the plants are subjected to two cycles of inoculation. Tillers were divided and covered with vinyl cylinders to protect them from the inoculum spray when they were not being inoculated. The double-inoculation technique allowed perfect differentiation between resistant and susceptible rust reactions on a single plant. This technique is a good method to study adult plant resistance.

English

Lucia Segura

Reprints Collection