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1. Late blight occurrence and LB severity by major production area in the country. What crops were affected (tomato, potato, others)? Disease sources (seed, cull piles, volunteer plants, soil)?

The important potato diseases are viruses, followed by late blight, and early blight. Late blight is an important problem where sprinkler irrigation is used.

2. LB impact (foliar damage, yield losses, tuber rot occurrences)?

3. Fungicide use (amounts, types, etc.)?

Fungicides are normally used 3 times in the Delta area and 6 times under sprinkler irrigation in the newly reclaimed regions.

4. Other LB control measures (resistant cultivars, forecast systems, none)?

The resistant variety CIP-Sagar is grown in some parts of the country.

5. LB control effectiveness (fungicide or host resistance failures)?

6. Pathogen strains (mating type, fungicide resistance, virulence factors, etc)?

The A2 mating type was isolated from blighted potatoes imported from Egypt. The oospores produced in the matings with Welsh isolates germinated readily (Abdel-Satter & Shaw, 1985; Shaw et al, 1985.)

In a study of 420 Phytophthora infestans isolates from potato (161 potato fields) and 14 from tomato in one field, 93.1% were A1 mating type, 5.3% were A2 and 1.6% were self-fertile. The potato isolates were as pathogenic on tomato as the tomato isolates. Twenty-three physiological races/virulence phenotypes were identified among the 100 isolates tested using nine potato differentials (R1, R2, R3, R4, R7, R8, R10, R11) (El-Korany, 1994).

In a study of 19 isolates collected in the Nile Delta, three distinct groups were defined by isoenzyme analysis (Baka ZAM, 1997).

7. Disease risks and/or major needs?

8. Any publications on late blight in the country?

Abdel-Sattar Ma and Shaw D S. 1985. Sexual production and oospore germination of Phytophthora infestans. pp 978–998 in: First National Conference of Pests and Diseases of Vegetables and Field Crops in Egypt, 21–23 October 1985, Ismalia, Egypt. Suez Cana University, Faculty of Agriculture, Ismalia, Egypt.

Baka ZAM, 1997. Mating type, nuclear DNA content and isozyme analysis of Egyptian isolates of Phytophthora infestans. Folia Microbiologica, 42(6):613-620; 29 ref.

El-Korany A E. 1994. Pathological studies on late blight of potato caused by Phytophthora infestans. PhD Thesis. Department of Agricultural Botany, Faculty of Agriculture, Suez Canal University, Ismalia, Egypt.

Shaw D S. Fyfe, A.M. Hibberd, P.G. 1985. Occurrence of the rare A2 mating type of Phytophthora infestans on imported Egyptian potatoes and the production of sexual progeny with A1 mating types from the UK. Plant Pathology 34:552–556

9. Is tuber blight an increasing problem?

10. Other comments

Potato production

Potato ranks the first in export and second in acreage among vegetable crops, occupying about 15% of the total area used for vegetable cultivation. Potato is becoming an important universal food and due to the continuous population increase (now 66 million), potato cultivation is expanding to newly reclaimed areas. The potato area in Egypt represents about 10.4% of the total potato area in Africa.

Many parts of Egypt are suitable for potato production. Potato is cultivated during three seasons: fall, winter and spring/summer. Fall and winter cultivation take place during September – November.  In these two seasons, locally multiplied seeds are used and production starts to appear in December. Most of this production is consumed locally and only small amounts are exported to some Arab countries.  Summer season potato is cultivated during December – February, using both imported and locally multiplied seed and its production starts to appear during March – May. While most of its production is for export, the residual is directed for local consumption and the multiplication of seed required for the fall and winter seasons.

Other references

El-Bedewy R. and A. Sharara, 1990. Potato production in Egypt. CIHEAM-CIP Potato Workshop of the Mediterranean Region 10–13 September 1990., Zaragoza, Spain. 7 p.

 Contact Ramzy El-Bedewy, Email: R.El-Bedewy(at)cgiar.org or GILB@cgiar.org