Colletotrichum gloeosporioides E C. boninense associados à antracnose do café no Brasil.

Colletotrichum gloeosporioides sempre esteve associado ao sintoma de antracnose do cafeeiro, embora não tenha sido possível provar a sua patogenicidade à planta. Em 2010, de amostras de Coffea spp. do Espírito Santo e Bahia, foi isolado, além de C. gloeosporioides, um Colletotrichum com características morfológicas diferentes (colônia branca a róseo-alaranjada, com halos concêntricos escuros). A identificação da espécie foi feita pela amplificação da região ITS (internal transcribed spacer) do rDNA com o primer universal ITS4 em combinação com os primers CaInt2, CgInt e Col1, específicos para C. acutatum, C. gloeosporioides e C. boninense, respectivamente. Os primers ITS4 e Col1 amplificaram um produto único de aproximadamente 500pb, esperado para C. boninense. A região ITS do rDNA e o gene GAPDH do isolado do Espírito Santo foram amplificados pelos primers ITS1 e ITS4, e GDF e GDR, respectivamente. As sequências resultantes foram depositadas no GenBank com números de acessos JF683320 e JF331654, respectivamente, e analisadas filogeneticamente com outras espécies de Colletotrichum. A região do rDNA apresentou 99% de identidade com sequências de C. gloeosporioides e C. boninense. No entanto, a análise do gene GAPDH confirmou que o isolado era definitivamente C. boninense sensu lato, por se mostrar idêntico a outras sequências em um amplo clado de isolados da espécie. Para avaliar a patogenicidade de C. boninense ao cafeeiro foi usada uma suspensão de conídios a 106 conídios.mL-1 para inoculação em hipocótilos, com e sem ferimento. Trinta dias após a inoculação foi detectada necrose em 30% dos hipocótilos com ferimento. Folhas destacadas foram inoculadas com discos de micélio e apresentaram lesão sete dias após a inoculação, somente no tratamento com ferimento. No momento, estão sendo inoculados frutos verdes destacados de cafeeiro e os resultados sugerem a associação entre C. gloeosporioides e C. boninense no estabelecimento da doença. Este é o primeiro relato de C. boninense associado à antracnose do café no Brasil

Vermicompost biostimulants: nutrients and auxin for root growth.

The present study was undertaken to establish if biostimulants diferently extracted from vermicompost causes root development and how mineral nutrients and plant growth substances are associated to diferent extraction methods

Differential expression of molecular rust resistance components have distinctive profiles in Coffea arabica - Hemileia vastatrix interactions.

Countering the economic hurdle caused by coffee leaf rust disease is most appealing at this time as it has posed a major threat to coffee production around the world. Establishing differential expression profiles at different times following pathogen invasion in both innate and acquired immunities unlocks the molecular components of resistance and susceptibility. Suppression subtractive hybridization (SSH) was used to identify genes differentially over-expressed and repressed during incompatible and compatible interactions between Coffea arabica and Hemileia vastatrix. From 433 clones of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) sequenced, 352 were annotated and categorized of which the proportion of genes expressed during compatible interaction were relatively smaller. The result showed upregulation and downregulation of various genes at 12 and 24 h after pathogen inoculation in both interactions. The use of four different databases in searching for gene homology resulted in different number of similar sequences. BLASTx against EMBL-EBI (European Molecular Biology Laboratory-European Bioinformatics Institute) database being with the maximum (100%) hits for all the annotated sequences. RT-qPCR analysis of seven resistance-signaling genes showed similar expression patterns for most of the genes in both interactions, indicating these genes are involved in basal (nonspecific) defense during which immune reactions are similar. Using SSH, we identified different types of resistance related genes that could be used for further studies towards resistant cultivar development. The potential role of some of the resistance related proteins found were also discussed

Plant proton pumps as markers of biostimulant action.

ABSTRACT A standard protocol to evaluate the effects of biostimulants on plant physiology is still lacking. The proton pumps present in the vacuolar and plasma membranes are the primary agents responsible for the regulation of the electrochemical gradient that energizes the nutrient uptake system and acid growth mechanism of plant cells. In this study, two of these enzymes were characterized as biochemical markers of biostimulant activity. A simple and fast protocol based on the degree of root acidification using a pH sensitive dye and the Micro-Tom tomato as a plant model is proposed as an efficient methodology to prove the efficacy of biostimulants that are claimed to improve nutrient acquisition and root growth. The results agree with the data from more conventional, expensive and time-consuming proton pump assays. A direct correlation was found between plasmalemma proton-adenosine triphosphatase (H+-ATPase) activation and the amount of rhizosphere acidification observed in the bromocresol gel. Moreover, roots of the diageotropica (dgt) Micro-Tom plants, defective in auxin responses, barely acidify bromocresol purple gel even in the presence of indole-3-acetic acid (IAA, 1 μM). The biostimulant TEA (vermicompost water extract, 25 %) enhances proton extrusion by 40 % in wild type (WT) plants, but no effect was induced in dgt plants. These results reinforce the notion that the class of biostimulant known as humic substances stimulates plant proton pumps and promotes root growth by exerting an auxin-like bioactivity and establish the usefulness of an economically and technically feasible assay to certify this kind of biostimulant

Avaliação preliminar da acidificação radicular de tomateiro como método in vivo de avaliação de atividade hormonal de bioestimulantes.

No presente trabalho foi verificada a ativação desta enzima in vivo mediante monitoramento da acidificação radicular tanto por meio de reagente púrpura de bromocresol (cuja mudança de cor de púrpura para amarelo denota aumento da concentração de H+) e por eletrodo de pH na presença ou não de ácido-3-indol acético em plântulas de tomateiro.Resumo 4

Comparative study of different molecular markers for classifying and establishing genetic relationshps in Coffea Canephora.

The genetic variability characterization of the accessions of the germplasm collection, using molecular markers, is being applied as a complementary strategy to the traditional approaches to redefine the plant genetic resources. In this study, we compared the informativeness and efficiency of the molecular markers RAPD, AFLP and SSR in the analysis of 94 accessions of Coffea canephora germplasm held by the breeding program of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), Rondonia State, Brazil. For this, we considered the marker?s discriminatory power and level of polymorphism detected and also the genetic relationships and clustering (dendrogram) analysis. The RAPD marker yielded low-quality data and problems in the discrimination of some accessions, being less recommended for genetic studies of C. canephora . The SSRs had a higher level of information content and yielded high-quality data, while AFLP was the most efficient marker system because of the simultaneous detection of abundant polymorphism markers per few reactions. Our results indicate that AFLP and SSR, allies to the intrinsic characteristics of each technique, are the most suitable molecular markers for genetic studies of C. canephora .However, the choice of AFLP or SSR in the species characterization should be made in agreement with some characteristics that are discussed in this work