Back

Investigations into the declining health of alder (Alnus glutinosa) along the river Lagan in Belfast, including the first report of Phytophthora lacustris causing disease of Alnus in Northern Ireland

O'Hanlon, R.; Wilson, J.; Cox, D.

2019-12-13 plant biology
10.1101/2019.12.13.875229 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Common alder (Alnus glutinosa) is an important tree species, especially in riparian and wet habitats. Alder is very common across Ireland and Northern Ireland, and provides a wide range of ecosystem services. Surveys along the river Lagan in Belfast, Northern Ireland led to the detection of several diseased Alnus trees. As it is known that Alnus suffers from a Phytophthora induced decline, this research set out to identify the presence and scale of the risk to Alnus health from Phytophthora and other closely related oomycetes. Sampling and a combination of morphological and molecular testing of symptomatic plant material and river baits identified the presence of several Phytophthora species, including Phytophthora lacustris. A survey of the tree vegetation along an 8.5 km stretch of the river revealed that of the 166 Alnus trees counted, 28 were severely defoliated/diseased and 9 were dead. Inoculation studies using potted Alnus saplings demonstrate that P. lacustris was able to cause disease, and Kochs postulates for this pathogen-host combination were completed, which suggests a future risk to Alnus health from P. lacustris in Northern Ireland.

Matching journals

The top 4 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.