Disease Resistant Tomato and Pepper for Taiwan and the Philippines (DRTPTP)

Start Date: October 2019
End Date: September 2022

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) and pepper (Capscium annuum) are among the most important vegetables grown by smallholder farmers in the tropics and subtropics. Bacterial wilt (BW), caused by the Ralstonia solanacearum species complex (RSSC), has been reported as the second most important plant pathogenic bacteria worldwide, and likely the most destructive. Globally, one of the most severe pepper diseases is anthracnose, which is caused by several members of the Colletotrichum species complex (CSC). Anthracnose results in serious losses in pepper, because it infects the fruits, the marketable portion of the crop. Furthermore, anthracnose lesions serve as an entry point for Aspergillus, resulting in the production of aflatoxin, a serious food safety concern.

In this project we will develop user-friendly molecular markers to characterize polymorphic loci identified in a panel of highly bacterial wilt resistant and susceptible tomato lines in a population of segregating lines to determine association with the phenotype and inheritance from parents to progeny. We will also scan the pepper genome using advanced bioinformatics techniques to identify regions with high homology to newly identified resistance-associated loci in tomato and develop synteny based molecular markers. Lastly, we will evaluate WorldVeg sources of resistance to bacterial wilt and anthracnose and characterize the pathogen populations in the Philippines to support their breeding programs and increase our understanding of resistance genes in a new location.