Spatial Pattern of Verticillium dahliae Microsclerotia and Cotton Plants with Wilt Symptoms in Commercial Plantations

Spatial patterns of pathogen inoculum in field soils and the resulting patterns of disease may reflect the underlying mechanisms of pathogen dispersal. This knowledge can be used to design more efficient sampling schemes for assessing diseases. Spatial patterns of Verticillium dahliae microsclerotia were characterized in commercial cotton fields through quadrat and point sampling in 1994 and 2013, respectively. Furthermore, cotton plants with wilt symptoms, caused by V. dahliae, were assessed in six commercial cotton fields in 2013. Soil samples were assayed for the density of microsclerotia (expressed as CFU g-1 of soil) using a wet-sieving plating method and a real-time quantitative PCR method for the 1994 and 2013 study, respectively. The estimated inoculum threshold for causing wilt development on individual plants varied with the three fields: ca. 1.6 CFU g-1 of soil for one field, and 7.2 CFU g-1 of soil for the other two. Both quadrat and point sampling spatial analyses showed that aggregation of V. dahliae inoculum in soils was usually not detected beyond 1.0 m. Similarly, the spatial patterns of wilted cotton plants indicated that spatial aggregation of diseased plants were only observed below the scale of 1.0 m in six commercial cotton plantations. Therefore, spatial aggregation of both V. dahliae inoculum and cotton plants with wilt symptoms is not likely to be detected above the scale of 1.0 m for most commercial cotton plantations. When designing schemes for assessing wilt inoculum and wilt development, this scale needs to be taken into consideration.