New strategies to study and control plant diseases and their application to kiwifruit decline (KD).

Supervisor: Marta Martini (UniUD)

A new disease is affecting Italian kiwifruit-growing. Spotted for the first time in 2011 in Veneto, this disease is spreading throughout northern Italy.

The affected plants show a collapsed root system with no feed roots and redness under the cortex. Symptoms on the above ground part become visible later in the season when the first heat waves arrive and the water demand increases due to fruit growing.  As result, the plants go through an irreversible and fast dieback usually ending with plant death at the end of the season. Most likely, this disease is the result of a combination of abiotic and biotic factors, but its aetiology and epidemiology have yet to be uncovered.

The aim of the PhD is to give insight on the causes behind this syndrome, leveraging on state of the art diagnostic techniques.

Field monitoring will be enhanced testing the correlations between optical sensor outputs and symptomatic plants to improve monitoring efficacy and the samples significance for laboratory tests.

Optical and TEM microscope observations will be performed to inspect ultrastructural modification on affected plant tissues.

Finally, biotic causes will be assessed using classical method and metagenomics techniques to study endophytic communities in kiwifruit roots and their association with the syndrome.

The proposed work will improve knowledge on this new disease, creating the basis for developing suitable monitoring and control practices.

Biography and contacts

Francesco Savian was born in May 1988, Pordenone, Italy. From November 2016 he is attending the PhD school in “Agriculture Science and Biotechnology” at University of Udine. From 2015 to 2016, he was a temporary research fellowship at University of Udine working on modelling plant diseases. In 2014 and 2011, he obtain, respectively, his master and bachelor degree in “Agricultural science and technologies” at University of Udine, both of them with a final score of 110/110 with honors.

E-mail: Francesco.savian@spes.uniud.it

Phone: +39 0432 558543