Screening a series of compunds for the activity against the plant pathogenic Oomycete Phytophthora infestans

Phytophthora infestans is plant pathogenic Oomycete that is infamous of the Irish famine in 19th century. Late blight in potato (Solanum tuberosum) caused by P.infestans is still a threat to potato cultivation all around the globe. A lot of research had been done on this organism, yet there is no effective way of ceasing the spread of P.infestans. Conventional fungicides seem to be ineffective and only way to control the disease seems to produce disease resistant crops. In the interest of addressing the issue, a chemogenomic approach is adopted to identify chemicals that inhibit the growth and germination of the organism. A chemical library derived from a mother compound, which was previously identified to inhibit the P.infestans, is screened to evaluate the activity on the zoospore germination and the mycerlial growth of P.infestans. In doing so, some chemicals had been identified to have remarkably effective inhibitoryaction on the zoospores and the hyphae. The concentrations of the chemicals at which they are identified were determined. However, because of time constraint, a completed screening wasnot performed and thus further experiments are required to compare and evaluate all the chemicals of the library.