Yesterday, we made use of the media. The students helped us find some field crops – beans, potato, wheat, citrus, tomato and cauliflower (apparently, the whole field looks like the picture to the left – not a good crop. The leaf spot spread to the head of the cauliflower). We were hoping for late blight on potato, since we wanted to make use of the PARPH media we made. PARPH is good for isolating Phytophthera sp., the causal organism for late blight. No such luck, it was Alernaria sp., the organism that causes early blight. We were also desperately looking for any bacterial diseases, but so far, we have not been successful. It could be because it has not rained much lately and the conditions are not favourable for bacterial problems… that might change when the rainy season starts. All fungal and insect/mite problems.
We did set up some soil from a tomato field using the Baermann funnel method. But although the funnels technique worked, I did not find any plant parasitic nematodes.
Christine in Nepal 