During the summer of 1942 sugar beets growing in an experimental plot at the Harrow laboratory were destroyed by a root rot of a type that apparently has been reported only once previously on this host in North America. Wilting of the foliage first attracts attention to affected plants, the roots of which show, externally, grayish-brown discoloured areas and, internally, fairly sharply-delimited, grayish to coffee-coloured lesions, affected tissues being more or less spongy in consistency. The causal organism, found to be a wound parasite, has been identified as Rhizopus arrhizus Fischer. The effect of temperature on the growth in culture and on the pathogenicity of this fungus and of representatives of the species, R. oryzae and R. nigricans, has been studied. It has been found that R. arrhizus and R. oryzae are relatively high temperature organisms, showing optimum growth at about 34° to 36 °C., and each capable of infecting and destroying artificially injured sugar beets most rapidly between 30° and 40 °C. R. nigricans, also a wound parasite is, on the other hand, a relatively low temperature organism showing optimum growth in culture at about 24° and displaying highest infection capability at about 14° to 16 °C.
Conventional and real-time pcr assays for detection and identification of rhizoctonia solani AG-2-2, the causal agent of root rot of sugar beet