Nitrogen also was used in hydroponic systems to investigate root infection of avocado (Persea americana), shortleaf pine (Pinus echinata) and loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) by Phytophthora cinnamomi[21, 27, 28]. However, none of these studies evaluated the potential impact of high concentration of nitrogen itself. Thus, the first assay

performed was to determine whether nitrogen itself impacts zoospore survival. Hoagland’s solution at 10% strength was used as base medium and four species of Phytophthora were included in this assay. Zoospore survival was compared among three PS-341 order solutions: (i) control solutions (CK) as a static 10% Hoagland’s solution with dissolved oxygen at 5.6 mg L-1, (ii) bubbled with nitrogen (N2) to reduce dissolved oxygen concentration to 0.9 mg L-1, and (iii) degassed after nitrogen bubbling (dN2) with a final concentration of dissolved

oxygen similar to that in the control solution. No difference in colony counts was observed between the control Dibutyryl-cAMP datasheet and degassed solutions (dN2) regardless of exposure time as illustrated by P. tropicalis (Figure 1). As expected, more colony counts were consistently resulted from the degassed solutions (dN2) than those not degassed (N2) solutions (Figure 1). These results indicate that dissolved nitrogen in the Hoagland’s solution had no effect on the zoospore survival. Similar results were obtained for the other three species evaluated in this study. These results implicate nitrogen had no impact on spore germination, mycelial growth, and root infection of avocado and pines in those previous studies [15, 17, 21, 24, 25, 27, 28] and it is a good replacement gas for the subsequent assays in this study. Figure 1 Impact of dissolved N 2 and oxygen on zoospore survival of Phytophthora

tropicalis . CK, 10% Hoagland’s solution (pH 7) at dissolved oxygen (DO) of 5.3 mg L-1 without N2 bubbling; N2, same solution bubbled with N2 for 10 min to reduced DO to 0.9 mg L-1; dN2, same solution bubbled with N2 for 10 min then aerated until DO returned to 5.3 mg L-1; Each column is a mean of the three replicates, topped with standard deviations of the mean. LY2874455 supplier Elevation to and reduction of dissolved oxygen concentration with gas bubbling The second assays conducted were to establish the relationship between dissolved oxygen concentration and gas bubbling time and to understand the post-bubbling dynamics of dissolved oxygen concentration in the solutions. Dissolved oxygen concentrations in the 10% Hoagland’s solution increased with increasing oxygen bubbling time (Table 1). But the speed of dissolved oxygen elevation in the solution decreased at every additional 15-second segment of bubbling time. This relationship was best fitted (R = 0.9842) as: in which y is the speed of dissolved oxygen elevation (mg L-1) per 15 seconds; x is the number of 15-second segments (x > 0).