Source: MICHIGAN STATE UNIV submitted to
BLUE-DYNAMO: AN INTERACTIVE PLATFORM TO DELIVER BLUEBERRY DISEASE AND HORTICULTURAL MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES FOR FRUIT ROTS
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
ACTIVE
Funding Source
OTHER GRANTS
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1031503
Grant No.
2023-51181-41322
Cumulative Award Amt.
$3,952,330.00
Proposal No.
2023-05629
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Project Start Date
Sep 15, 2023
Project End Date
Sep 14, 2027
Grant Year
2023
Program Code
[SCRI]- Specialty Crop Research Initiative
Project Director
Miles, T.
Recipient Organization
MICHIGAN STATE UNIV
(N/A)
EAST LANSING,MI 48824
Performing Department
PLANT SOIL MICROBIAL
Non Technical Summary
Blueberries are a native American fruit and quality is critical for domestic and export markets. Blueberries must withstand harvesting, storage, packaging, and shipping. In the U.S., reduced availability of hand labor and rising labor costs for harvesting fresh fruit are creating a competitive advantage for foreign producers.U.S. growers are challenged with adopting new technologies including mechanical harvesters and improved grading and sorting lines to remain competitive. However, adoption of these new technologies also results in increased crop loss due to reductions in berry quality. Alterations to the current production systems are necessary to better adapt to these changes. This project is aimed at increasing competitiveness and sustainability of the U.S. blueberry industry by developing methods to improve fruit quality and reduce crop loss.The BLUE-DYNAMO team will continue its ongoing research efforts to address challenges to fruit quality through this project. Research objectives such as measuringpathogen diversity, collecting crop production data to correlate with fruit rot, and studying regional production effects on microbial communities are a few main foci. This will initiate a significant connection with our grower stakeholders throughout the project and facilitate the enterprise budgets to be modified to reflect current, regional grower practices. The overall output from this proposal is the BLUE-DYNAMO website which includes management practices, economics, safety to pollinators, and efficacy.
Animal Health Component
70%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
15%
Applied
70%
Developmental
15%
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
2121120116030%
2121120301010%
2121120110230%
2121120106030%
Knowledge Area
212 - Pathogens and Nematodes Affecting Plants;

Subject Of Investigation
1120 - Blueberry;

Field Of Science
1060 - Biology (whole systems); 1160 - Pathology; 1102 - Mycology; 3010 - Economics;
Goals / Objectives
The BLUE-DYNAMO project is backed by a team of experts in small fruit pathology, horticulture, agricultural economics, and agricultural engineering. Some portions of the proposal such as optical imaging (Obj. 3) and agricultural economics (Obj. 4) have the potential to benefit a wide audience in the specialty crop community. Furthermore, six of the PIs on this proposal have large extension appointments in their current position and have many contacts with the blueberry industry across the United States. Due to these strong relationships, a platform like BLUE-DYNAMO and the associated website will likely have a significantly stronger chance of being adopted by the industry and expanded to other situations within the blueberry and small fruit industries.This project will have several potential benefits across the blueberry industry that could span into other areas of specialty crop production at economical (1), social (2), and environmental (3) levels which involves a systems approach to blueberry fruit quality.This project also has a significant investment in new technologies such as advanced pathogen diagnostics (Obj. 1) and CRISPR for understanding pathogen fitness costs (Obj. 2). We tie these ideas of disease control with aspects of modeling fruit quality and advanced optical imaging techniques to predict fruit firmness and improve early detection of fruit rots (Obj. 3). Together this proposal builds a system that can help improve disease control and fruit quality of blueberries while also being readily adopted by industry professionals. If these tools are adopted on a broad scale, it will likely appeal to other small fruit crops (e.g., strawberries and brambles) which are also prone to fruit rot diseases that affect fruit quality.The long-term goal of this project is to take a multi-faceted approach for developing effective blueberry fruit rot management programs while balancing the cost/benefit ratio to guide farm management decisions. This project addresses two SCRI focus areas: Efforts to identify and address threats from diseases and efforts to improve production efficiency, handling and processing, productivity, and profitability over the long term. Novel contributions from this project include:Obj. 1. Understand how management practices influence fruit rot development and characterize the pathogen population structure: Generate new knowledge on the dynamics of population structure of fruit rot pathogens across regions that represent approximately 75% of the blueberry industry in the U.S.Obj. 2. Implement molecular tools and understand fitness costs associated with fungicide resistance: Use molecular tools to detect fungicide resistance mutations and investigate fitness costs associated with development of fungicide resistance.Obj. 3. Develop cultivar-specific maturity-firmness models and imaging technology to better detect and sort blueberries susceptible to fruit rots: Establish tools to detect and sort susceptible blueberry fruit before visible disease symptoms appear.Obj. 4. Delivering best practices for improving fruit quality through BLUE-DYNAMO: Build the BLUE-DYNAMO (Building the Latest Understanding in Extension - Disease management that Yields New and Meaningful Outputs) website, the project centerpiece, which provides a portal for blueberry growers and field professionals to view management options, gain insights on economic impacts, view pathogen population composition from different regions, and identify where fungicide resistance is emerging.
Project Methods
Obj. 1 - MethodsObj. 1.1. Investigate disease and pathogen profiles among major U.S. blueberry producing regions.Obj. 1.2. Understand current fruit rot management practices to improve efficiency and cost-efficacy.Obj. 1.3. Understand whole-fruit microbial community composition.Obj. 2 - MethodsObj. 2.1. Determine the fungicide resistance profiles of blueberry fruit rot pathogens.Obj. 2.2. Introduce point mutations (H272R and P225F) in the SDHB gene and 3-bp (L497) deletion in the MRR1 gene by utilizing a marker-free RNP complex in B. cinerea.Obj. 2.3.To determine fitness, competitiveness, and sensitivity to unrelated chemical classes of fungicides in resistant mutants.Obj. 3 - MethodsObj. 3.1. Identify rot- and cultivar-specific models linking fruit maturity and fruit rot development.Obj. 3.2. Develop depth-resolved imaging technique for early detection of blueberry fruit rots.Obj. 3.3. Develop light scattering techniques to predict fruit firmness.Obj. 4 - MethodsObj. 4.1. Development of the BLUE-DYNAMO web interface to increase fruit quality.Obj. 4.2. Economic Risk Assessment and Cost Benefit Analysis.Obj. 4.3. Develop a data repository of pesticide efficacy studies focused on blueberry fruit rot management.

Progress 09/15/23 to 09/14/24

Outputs
Target Audience:While the primary target audience for each PI's work is specific to blueberry producers in their respective regions, it is anticipated that research results on fruit rot diseases will benefit and be directly utilized by extension personnel, crop consultants, industry stakeholder groups, and other small fruit researchers. As the blueberry industry has expanded geographically, competition has increased and the need for on-farm efficiency is paramount to survival. The economic implication of this research has the potential to go far beyond to include the fruit industry as a whole and the many associated industries. These groups will benefit from insights into the impact of fruit rot-control strategies on production costs, yields, and ultimately farm profitability. In this first year, efforts have been made to inform growers and the industry about this project, its goals, and the resources it will provide. We have communicated directly with individual growers during field visits in Michigan, Georgia, New Jersey, Washington, and Oregon as well as participated in regional meetings targeting small fruit growers and stakeholders across the U.S. We have also targeted growers and industry in multiple regions through online extension publications and newsletter articles. Out largest outreach effort to date is the development of a project website: bluedynamo.org. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Training opportunities have been provided for new graduate students who are involved in how to interact with growers, field sampling, data collection and analysis, aseptic culturing techniques, and molecular assay protocol development. A training event for county extension personnel was held at the University of Georgia in January 2024. At this event, Dr. Oliver made a presentation entitled "Recognizing and managing blueberry disease issues" in which he detailed the latest information on the integrated pest management of fruit rot diseases. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?While actual research data specifically from year 1 is still being generated, best integrated management practices for fruit rot diseases were disseminated to target audiences through 11 presentations at industry and extension conferences, 2 peer review articles, and 7 extension articles. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?There has been a low incidence of blueberry fruit rots in Oregon this year. The growing region spans a distance of around 200 miles, which results in different climatic zones and disease management practices. To address this challenge, we will sample additional fields and increase the sample sizes. Other regions had significant fruit rot throughout the regions. We have sampled more heavily these regions during 2024.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Obj. 1: Characterize fruit rot pathogens Obj. 1.1 Investigate pathogen profiles: Ripe fruit has been sampled from field sites in all major blueberry regions across the U.S. Fruit was incubated under high humidity to encourage the fruit to rot, then the isolates were collected and stored. Additionally, blossoms were collected in Michigan, which led to the discovery of a new Botrytis species. Obj. 1.2 Understand management practices: We are in the process of submitting an IRB exemption to collect fungicide records from growers. Obj. 2: Implement molecular tools Obj. 2.1 Determine fungicide resistance: Protocols for conducting quantitative real-time PCR assays to identify mutations in Botrytis spp. conferring resistance to FRAC group 7 fungicides are being standardized. A culture collection with previously characterized mutations for FRAC 7 fungicides was generated for successful execution of molecular assays. Obj. 2.2 Generate fungicide resistance mutations: CRISPR, guide RNA, and donor DNA have been designed for the first two genotypes. We have isolated B. cinerea protoplast, a key step in transformation. Further, we have obtained candidates that may have desired mutations, and the validation is in progress. Obj. 3: Disease models and imaging technology Obj. 3.1 Develop rot development models: Plants of three cultivars were inoculated with C. fioriniae or B. cinerea during bloom or fruit ripening stages. Fruit from each plant were frozen for subsequent analyses, utilized for measurements of respiration or firmness, or incubated under high humidity conditions for disease assessment. Obj. 3.2 Develop imaging technique: Screens have been designed and 3D printed in order to transport and image fruit without interference of metal. Obj. 4: Communicate best practices Obj. 4.1 Develop BlueDynamo website: The website is still under development but has been recently launched: bluedynamo.org. Obj. 4.2 Economic risk assessment: Blueberry enterprise budgets were gathered from key states (i.e., NJ, MI, WA) and a budget model was developed. The model will be used to perform partial budget analysis and provide insights into the impacts of alternative fungicide programs on farm profitability. Obj. 4.3 Pesticide efficacy record analysis: The team has been developing a survey questionnaire to understand current landscape of disease management practices followed by blueberry growers in the U.S.

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Neugebauer, K.A., Mattupalli, C., Hu, M.J., Oliver, J.E., VanderWeide, J., Lu, Y., Sullivan, K., Stockwell, V.O., Oudemans, P.V., and Miles, T.D. 2024. Managing fruit rot diseases of Vaccinium corymbosum. Front. Plant Sci. doi:10.3389/fpls.2024.1428769
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Abbey, J.A., Alzohairy, S.A., Neugebauer, K.A., Hatlen, R.J., and Miles, T.D. 2024. Fungicide resistance in Botrytis cinerea and identification of Botrytis species associated with blueberry in Michigan. Front. Microbiol. doi:10.3389/fmicb.2024.1425392
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Sial, A., Cato, A., Pfeiffer, D., Favre, M., Cline, B., Ferguson, M.H., Melanson, R., Oliver, J.E., et al. 2024. 2024 Southeast Regional Blueberry Integrated Management Guide. (Annual Publication 123-4). University of Georgia Extension.
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Oliver, J.E. and Bollenbacher, C. 2023. Anthracnose fruit rot of blueberry: predictive tools and management recommendations. Georgia Blueberry Growers Association Newsletter. 23(5):4-11.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2024 Citation: Oliver, J.E. Recognizing and managing blueberry disease issues, January 17, 2024. Extension Training: Blueberries: Nutrition, disease, and insect pest problems in production management (SES-02191), Putnam County, GA.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Szymanski, S. , Bonito, G., Miles, T.D. 2023. Temporal and compartmental characterization of the blueberry phyllosphere microbiome. August 2023. Plant Health 2023. Denver Colorado. Phytopathology S3.101
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: VanderWeide, J., Isaacs, R., Miles, T., Edger, Sloan, C., Garcia-Salazar, C. 2024. Blueberry Varieties for Michigan. Available at: https://www.canr.msu.edu/resources/blueberry-varieties-for-michigan
  • Type: Other Status: Other Year Published: 2024 Citation: Miles, T.D. Fungicide Resistance. MSU Fruit School. February 2024. Okemos MI