Suitability of celery cultivars to infection by populations of Meloidogyne hapla

In addition to a limited number of commercially available cultivars, celery has least known status against plant-parasitic nematodes such as Meloidogyne hapla. The interactions of the cvs Dutchess and Green Bay, most widely used, and P-6848 Pybas and S-1355, new entries, and populations of M. hapla, Mh 1, Mh 2 and Mh 3, isolated from sandy/sandy loam soils, and Mh 4 and Mh 5, isolated from organic (muck) soil typical of celery production, were examined in a one nematode-generation glasshouse experiment. The tomato cv. Rutgers, a susceptible host on which the M. hapla populations were cultured, was used as a nematode viability control. Mh 5 followed by Mh 3 were the most infective of the populations of M. hapla. The celery cultivars ranged between 32% and 67% of the suitability of Rutgers tomato to M. hapla. In 3-month long experiments, inocula of 3500 and 9100 Mh 4 eggs (600 cm3 soil)−1 suppressed celery growth, suggesting the potential of these populations of M. hapla to cause yield loss. However, the varying degree of host suitability suggests that the severity of the problem will likely vary by cultivar and population of M. hapla. The study establishes numerical references for selecting cultivars and/or designing suitable location-specific management practices.