Potential role of pollen and pollinators in the spread of blossom blight of seed alfalfa caused by<i>Botrytis cinerea</i>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The fungal pathogen Botrytis cinerea Pers.: Fr. infects flowers of many plant species, including alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.). In southern Alberta, blossom blight, caused in part by B. cinerea, reduces yields of seed alfalfa in cool, wet growing seasons. Previous studies have suggested that B. cinerea uses pollen to begin infection, and that the fungal-infected pollen may be vectored by alfalfa leafcutter bees (Megachile rotundata Fab.). A longitudinal greenhouse study was performed to investigate the role of pollen in the infection process of alfalfa florets by B. cinerea. The effects of pollination (pollinated vs unpollinated) and inoculation method (dry vs aqueous suspension) on floret and pollen infection was tested. Florets were harvested at 0, 24, 48 and 94 h after inoculation. Pollinated florets that were dry inoculated had significantly greater levels of infection (84%) than similarly inoculated unpollinated florets (38%, P < 0.001); however no pollen infection was observed. In contrast, 90% of suspension-inoculated florets were infected and a small (<1%) but significant (P < 0.0001) level of infected pollen was observed in these samples. Leafcutter bees were also collected from seed alfalfa fields in 2013 and 2014 to estimate the prevalence of B. cinerea on pollen. Pollen removed from field bees showed no growth by B. cinerea; however, the bees that were directly plated on agar medium exhibited an increased load of B. cinerea as the growing season progressed. Thus, under typical field conditions, alfalfa pollen is not likely to be a significant factor contributing to the establishment and spread of B. cinerea.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".