The below mentioned article provides a practical experiment on the inoculation of plant pathogen.
Principle:
Plant pathogen can be artificially inoculated, into a host and thereafter incubated for colonisation and spread of pathogen. The pathogenic infection thereafter can be detected by the symptomatic expression.
Requirements:
1. Culture slant of a pathogen
2. Potato tuber
3. Cork-borer
4. Inoculating needle
5. Bunsen burner
6. Rectified spirit
7. Sealing wax, cotton etc.
8. Glass marker
9. Knife
10. Incubator (30°C).
Procedure:
1. A healthy medium size tuber is taken. Then its surface is sterilised by rectified spirit soaked cotton.
2. Thereafter a hole is made by cork-borer aseptically over the flame.
3. A small amount of pathogenic inoculum is taken up by inoculating needle and aseptically introducing the same to the hole made previously on tuber.
4. Now the hole is plugged, the tuber part and thereafter sealed at the inoculating zone by sealing wax.
5. Artificially inoculated tuber is then marked and incubated at 30°C for 3-5 days.
6. Thereafter the tuber is sectioned into a few pieces to examine whether there is any development of symptoms.
Observation:
Typical infective symptoms will be noticed.
The details steps of procedure are presented in Fig 3.37.
