Impact of the potato inoculation date on potato virus Y load and viral distribution in daughter tubers at harvest

Aged plants are more difficult to infect than young plantlets. This modification of susceptibility is described as mature plant resistance (MPR). For potato virus Y (PVY), MPR is known to lead to low infection rates of plants inoculated at the postflowering stage and a decrease in the number of infected daughter tubers. However, the impact of inoculation date on the capacity of PVY to accumulate in daughter tubers has not been studied so far. Field and greenhouse experiments were carried out to better understand PVY epidemiology and to help potato growers to evaluate consequences of early/late infections on the quality of their crops. In field trials, potato plants (cv. Bintje) were covered by insectproof nets from planting to harvest except for a 14-day period to expose plants to natural PVY infections. Under controlled conditions, potato plants were mechanically inoculated with PVY at different dates from preflowering stages (early inoculations) to postflowering stage (late inoculations). At harvest, daughter tubers were individually collected and analysed to define proportions and viral load of infected tubers according to the time between virus inoculation and harvest. Our results showed that although the age of plants at the time of inoculation can modify their susceptibility to PVY infection, in return, early and late PVY inoculations lead to similar rates of infected tubers at the plant scale and equivalent viral accumulation in infected tubers. All together, these data revealed that both early/late infections are high risks for the sanitary quality of potato tubers.