Diagnosis and identification of pathogens causing apple storage rots, by using PCR-RFLP and allele specific amplification

The incidence of apple fruit rots such as Venturia inaequalis, Botryotinia fuckeliana, Monilinia-, Penicillium-, and Gloeosporium-species varies depending on region, weather condition and spray programme. So far in Switzerland two additional fungicide sprays have to be applied to protect apples against storage rot. Early detection of latent infections is an essential tool to monitor and forecast the development of storage rot fungi. Fungicide applications could thus be recommended according to the occurrence of fungal infection. For genotype identification the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) sequence was amplified by PCR. These sequences were then digested with restriction enzymes to produce species-specific fragment patterns (RFLP). Fingerprinting considerably contributes to better understand the epidemiology of these pathogens.