Chronica - Acta Horticulturae

Participants of the symposium in front of congress hall.
The next presentation was made by Prof. Hadidi
on DNA microarrays. It offers a new technology
for the simultaneous detection and identification
of many pathogens including virus and
virus-like pathogens of fruit crops in one test.
He gave a brief introduction of the technology
and stated that it was introduced in 1995 by
Schena et al. of Stanford University and since
then this technology has attracted great interest
among biologists. .Further, he mentioned that
this technique is currently being applied in the
Participants of the symposium in Aspendos amphitheatre in Antalya.
broad areas of biomedical, pharmacological,
and genomic research as well as diagnosis and
food safety and quality. Finally, he explained
possible application of this technique for the
detection and identification of plant pathogens
in general and viruses, viroids and phytoplasmas
in particular. The advantages and disadvantages
of this technique were also discussed.
Eight oral sessions and one poster session were
presented during the symposia. In the oral session
of Stone Fruit Diseases other than Plum
Pox, most papers dealt with response of Prunus
plants to virus infection, aetiology of some
diseases, genetic diversity, evolution, relationships
and diagnostic techniques for specific and
reliable detection.
The presentations of the session on Pome Fruit
Viruses dealt with sanitary surveys, diagnosis
improvements, genetic diversity and disease
effect, especially that of Apple chlorotic leaf
spot virus (ACLSV) on the quality and yield of
apples. Pear was described as a new host for
Apple mosaic virus (ApMV).
Two sessions were on Plum Pox virus (PPV). As
usual, they had the largest number of communications
because PPV causes the most important
virus disease (sharka) that affects the stone
fruit industry. These sessions started with the
invited communication of Dr. Sehinaz
Sahtiyancı, who described sharka disease for
the first time in Turkey in 1968. She gave general
information about the history of the disease
and then presented recent studies of the
disease in Turkey. Papers presented in the two
sessions were on the current status of the
disease in different countries, detection
methods, host range, epidemiology, molecular
characterization of isolates, Prunus-PPV interactions
at the molecular and cellular levels, evaluation
of susceptibility, studies on natural resistance
and pathogen-derived resistance from
transgenic plants and cross-protection.
A session on Fruit Tree Phytoplasmas was presented.
Its main presentations were on
detection methods, molecular characterization,
genetic variability of isolates, epidemiology and
control possibilities.
Most papers of the session on Viroid Diseases
concentrated on detection techniques and
molecular characterization.
The papers presented during the session on
Advances in Pathogen Detection were mainly
on increasing specificity and sensitivity of diagnostic
methods, especially Real-Time-PCR and
microarrays technology.
ISHS • 48