Rapid growth in trade of agricultural products has increased the risk of introduction of exotic pests into new area. In order to fulfill quarantine obligations, several treatments are in practice: fumigation with methyl bromide (MB), application of extreme temperatures, controlled atmospheres, and combinations of them. Although MB was most effective and widely applied for quarantine treatment, its use was banned by the Montreal Protocol. Ionizing irradiation phytosanitary treatments – gamma radiation, electron beam, and X-ray are being used as an alternative to MB currently. For applying ionizing irradiation as a quarantine treatment, there is a research protocol which should be followed, International Standards for Phytosanitary Measure 18 [ISPM #18] and Phytosanitary Treatment Regulation of Korea (Notice 2014-35).
We have evaluated the effect of gamma radiation, electron beam, and X-ray on H. armigera as quarantine treatments. In this presentation, ISPM #18 and Notice 2014-35 will be talked with the example of H. armigera.
Magnaporthe oryzae is a causal pathogen of the rice blast, the most destructive disease of rice worldwide. This ascomycete fungus has been intensively studied as a model organism in plant-pathogen interactions. Recently, the genome sequence of M. oryzae 70-15 was published by International Rice Blast Consortium. This led us to investigate comparative and functional analysis of this pathogen at genome-wide level. As a first step, sequencing project of M. oryzae Korean strain KJ201 was launched to face practical interests on diversity of plant pathogens. We constructed a fosmid library with a copy number controllable pCC1 vector. Over 13,000 end reads from 6637 fosmid clones were generated and anchored on genome sequence of the strain 70-15. Currently, 9,793 end reads, in which 2.684, clones with both ends and 1,757 clones with on end matched, are aligned to the sequence of strain 70-15. In the next step, shotgun sequencing of fosmid clones was conducted for fine scale comparative analysis of chromosome 7 that is well defined in genome sequencing of 70-15. Totally 119 fosmid clones were pooled in region and analyzed. For reasonable intra-species comparison in genome of M. oryzae, two strains, KJ201 and Guy11, were chosen for whole genome shotgun sequencing analysis with GS454 FLX system. About 8X genome coverage sequences were obtained for each strain and being merged for comparative analysis. Genome information of other strains is being also available from China and Japanese research groups and could be joined together for extended comparative analysis and the results give more detail in genome diversity in species level.