Variation among volatile profiles induced by Botrytis cinerea infection of tomato plants

Abstract

Botrytis blight caused by the fungus Botrytis cinerea is probably the most common disease of greenhouse-grown crops like tomato. Botrytis blight in tomato plants is mainly detected by visual inspection or destructive biochemical and molecular determinations. These methods are time consuming and not suitable for large sample sizes. In contrast we propose a fast and non-destructive detection method for plant diagnosis using volatiles as an early indicator of plant diseases. This report presents the variation in volatile production during mild and severe infection of tomato plants by the phytopathogenic fungus B. cinerea. Volatile emission from tomato plants before and after inoculation with B. cinerea were analyzed using on-line gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry. The emission was monitored from 2 to 72 hours after inoculation/exposure with a time resolution of 1 hour. The multivariate data was subjected to principal component analysis for fast interpretation of the variation between mild and severe infection symptoms. In addition a statistical test was performed to search for significant differences in headspace composition between the period before and after inoculation. Results show that there are no significant different compounds between headspace composition before and after inoculation when binning the data from mild and severe infected plants. This implies that the severity of infection has a significant effect on the main emission