Prompt Progress Made Against a New Threat to Watermelon

From a USDA press release:

Last July, plant pathologist Chandrasekar Kousik of the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) U.S. Vegetable Laboratory in Charleston, S.C., was conducting field studies on a watermelon disease when he made a startling discovery: significant infestations of broad mites on watermelon plants.

Kousik knew that he had made a troublesome finding, as broad mites had never been reported on watermelon plants in the United States.

Broad mites, Polyphagotarsonemus latus, feed on at least 60 plant families. Cucumbers are highly susceptible to the mite, which on the watermelon plants was seen damaging tender leaves and growing tips. Watermelon (Citrullus lanatus) is an important economic commodity grown in 44 states—most prominently in Florida, Georgia, Texas, California, Indiana, South Carolina and North Carolina.

The discovery inspired Kousik, fellow Vegetable Laboratory scientists Amnon Levi and Alvin Simmons, and Clemson University researchers to seek ways to use plants' natural resistance to fight off the mite.

They turned to a collection of wild watermelon—plants from different regions of the world—maintained by the ARS Plant Genetic Resources Conservation Unit in Griffin, Ga.

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