A Review of Thermotherapy to Free Plant Materials from Pathogens, Especially Seeds from Bacteria

Abstract

Treating planting materials with heat is a one-century-old method of disease control that has proved to be efficient against various pathogenic microorganisms. Thermotherapy, simple in principle, consists in heat treatment of plant parts at temperature/time regimes that kill the conserved pathogen and that are only slightly injurious to the host. Heat is applied mainly by water, air, or vapor.

A large variety of plant parts can be heat treated: Whole tree, scions, vitroplants, seedlings, stalks, cuttings, sprouts, cut flowers, seeds, bulbs, tubers, corms, or fruit and vegetables in storage. The target pathogenic microorganisms are mainly fungi, viruses, and bacteria. Many studies show the success of reducing diseases by heat. Thermotherapy also is the main means, associated with meristem and tip culture, of producing virus-free explants from infected mother-plants.

Most bacterial diseases of annual plants are seed-borne. Seed-transmission provides numerous foci of primary infection in the field and only a relatively small amount of infested seeds is sufficient to promote serious disease outbreaks. To disinfect seeds, authors mainly use hot water and hot air treatments. Satisfactory control has been obtained for several bacterial diseases (on tomato, tobacco, rice, barley, cucumber, Crucifers, pumpkin, guar, and cotton), mostly caused by the genera Xanthomonas and Pseudomonas. Thermotherapy is more difficult to use with large seeds of legumes, such as pea, bean, or soybean, because a significant decrease of germination is often obtained before the bacteria have been totally killed. The success of thermotherapy may be improved by combination with chemicals at the seed stage, by sprays during plant growth, or by replacing water with nonaqueous fluids.

When no efficient chemicals are known to control a disease, treating seeds by heat may be of great interest. However, the method requires studies to determine the most appropriate kind of heat for a particular plant part, and the optimal combination of time and temperature of exposure to use for the best efficiency with the least damage to the host.

Key Words:

• heat treatment