The production of stone fruit and almond is of great importance at the Spanish, European and global levels. It is currently limited by bacterial diseases and, especially those caused by quarantine pathogens spreading from localized and restricted areas towards new regions and crops. Prevention and management of these diseases is a challenge to sustainable crop production and food safety. Moreover, restriction of active ingredients for crop protection and the need to decrease pesticide inputs in the agroecosystem (EU Dir. 2009/128) led to the need to develop novel sustainable and effective products and strategies that have minimal impact on the host plant and the ecosystem. 

This proposal aims at setting up the scientific and technological basis for implementation of a stone fruit disease management strategy based on combination of bioactive peptides (antimicrobial and plant defence elicitors) and disease forecasting systems (coupled to climate predictions and climate change simulations). The proposal focuses on a model pathosystem: Xanthomonas arboricola pv pruni-Prunus persica (UE quarantine pathogen, causal agent of bacterial spot of stone fruit)

The specific goals are:

To provide a qualitative advance in the implementation of innovative strategies for prevention and management of bacterial spot of stone fruit disease, which are effective and have a minimal ecological footprint, thus increasing food quality and safety.

To obtain new biotechnological compounds (bioactive peptides) that will be evaluated under greenhouse and field conditions,

To develop a disease risk forecasting system that will be validated as a decision support tool. A novel approach in disease forecasting will be proposed based on the introduction of climate predictions for wetness estimation, thus allowing the disease forecaster to predict infection risk 24-48 h beforehand.

The forecaster will be a useful tool for:

• • Sanitary inspection, assessment of new disease outbreaks and identification of new disease risk areas.
  • Climate change effects simulation will contribute to estimate the future geographical distribution of this disease in Europe and Spain, and to refine the disease management strategies.