Analysis of Volatile Profiles for Tracking Asymptomatic Infections of Phytophthora ramorum and Other Pathogens in Rhododendron

is an invasive, broad host range pathogen that causes ramorum blight and sudden oak death in forest landscapes of western North America. In commercial nurseries, asymptomatic infections of nursery stock by and other species create unacceptable risk and complicate inspection and certification programs designed to prevent introduction and spread of these pathogens. In this study, we continue development of a volatile organic compound (VOC)-based test for detecting asymptomatic infections of in sp. We confirmed detection of from volatiles collected from asymptomatic root-inoculated plants in a nursery setting, finding that the VOC profile of infected plants is detectably different from that of healthy plants, when measured from both ambient VOC emissions and VOCs extracted from leaf material. Predicting infection status was successful from ambient volatiles, which had a mean area under the curve (AUC) value of 0.71 ± 0.17, derived from corresponding receiver operating characteristic curves from an extreme gradient boosting discriminant analysis. This finding compares with that of extracted leaf volatiles, which resulted in a lower AUC value of 0.51 ± 0.21. In a growth chamber, we contrasted volatile profiles of asymptomatic plants having roots infected with one of three pathogens: , , and . Each pathogen induced unique and measurable changes, but generally the infections reduced volatile emissions until 17 weeks after inoculation, when emissions trended upward relative to those of mock-inoculated controls. Forty-five compounds had significant differences compared with mock-inoculated controls in at least one host-pathogen combination.