Finland: MRI shows how crown rot infection progresses in strawberries

Researchers from the Department of Technical Physics and the Department of Environmental and Biological Sciences at the University of Eastern Finland have used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to investigate how the pathogen Phytophthora cactorum affects the growth and development of strawberry plants. This pathogen causes crown rot in strawberries and can lead to significant losses on horticultural crops.The researchers used MRI to investigate differences between healthy and infected plants over a three-week period, discovering that infected plants differ significantly from the healthy ones. Published in Scientific Reports, the study found that infected plants had elevated relaxation times inside their crowns compared to healthy ones.These differences were observed both as spatial and temporal changes, which made it possible to visualize infection progression. MRI data were also confirmed with the anatomical structure of the plants by dissecting their crowns at the end of the ...