I am having a lot of trouble getting my rhododendron leaves to become infected and having discussed the issues with a group of scientists working on Phytophthoras I have come up with a list of ideas which may be the reason for this:
1. The plants are dormant and have suberised for the winter and so their innate immunity afforded by their thick cuticle is especially effective.
2. The plants have been wounded by me cutting leaves from them for previous experiments and this has elicited systemic aquired resistance to infection.
3. The plants at the farm are irrigated by water which has been treated and this may be inhibiting the infectivity of the plants.
To test these theories I will carry out a number of small scale experiments using detached leaves to determine if there is an effect of wounding the plants or if there is a difference in infectivity year round or how the irrigation is affecting the plants.
back to the research
Well it's a new term and I'm not taking any classes and I'm not teaching so I can devote all my time to my research and it's the perfect time for it as I am having my first committee meeting this term and I will give my research proposal seminar at the start of next term too so I will have plenty of time to prepare fully for those two events.
I have finally got my committee members together and set a date so I need to prepare a summary of my research proposal for them and get my program of study signed off by them. I am gearing up to set up another farm experiment with a slightly different foliar inoculation method and I'm making plans for a lot of other little experiments to supplement the main project.
Yesterday I spent the day helping Kim take down her soil inoculation experiment in the growth chamber and although her experiment didn't go as planned it was a good experience for me as I will need to follow a similar method when I take down my farm experiment. There are definately some lessons to be learnt from these initial runs of the soil inoculation and this might mean tweaking my experimental design for my field experiments a little. We'll see.
I have finally got my committee members together and set a date so I need to prepare a summary of my research proposal for them and get my program of study signed off by them. I am gearing up to set up another farm experiment with a slightly different foliar inoculation method and I'm making plans for a lot of other little experiments to supplement the main project.
Yesterday I spent the day helping Kim take down her soil inoculation experiment in the growth chamber and although her experiment didn't go as planned it was a good experience for me as I will need to follow a similar method when I take down my farm experiment. There are definately some lessons to be learnt from these initial runs of the soil inoculation and this might mean tweaking my experimental design for my field experiments a little. We'll see.
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