NEW POSSIBILITIES OF CONTROLLING CLUBROOT (PLASMODIOPHORA BRASSICAE) IN THE INTEGRATED CULTIVATION SYSTEM

Clubroot, caused by the obligate biotroph Plasmodiophora brassicae, is one of the economically most important diseases of Brassica crops in the world. In the last two years the most important economically has been the epidemic occurrence of clubroot in major oilseed rape growing areas under monoculture in Poland, like in the Canadian canola crops. At present, at the Research Institute of Horticulture, are continuing several experiments concerning the screening of some natural products such as plant extracts from berry fruits (strawberry) – SFET/08 AOD®, and herbs – ST1 Ernia^®, to compare them with standard chemical products – fluazinam (Altima 500 SC^®) and calcium cyanamide. In recent field trials, the most effective in clubroot control was the plant extract SFET/08 AOD, which was more effective than the standard chemical fungicide fluazinam. It was also found that the extract from herbal plants, Ernia, induced natural resistance to P. brassicae in cabbage plants, but its effectiveness was very low and not repeatable from test to test. The new plant extracts create a new possibility of controlling clubroot. At the same time, many other agrotechnical methods are being developed for effective control of clubroot, such as using Brassica catch crops (white mustard). Also, soil samples from fields infected with P. brassicae in Poland are evaluated to check for the occurrence of new pathotypes in infested oilseed rape crops following greenhouse biological test using Williams (1966) set to compare with the PCR method. Finally, would like to produce a map of the locations of the infected fields with specifications of P. brassicae strains in Poland using the conventional and molecular techniques.