Revisiting brown etch of pumpkins

⁠⁠⁠Horticulture Innovation Australia (Hort Innovation) is a not-for-profit, grower-owned Research and Development Corporation (RDC) for Australia’s $14.4 billion horticulture industry. Hort Innovation invests around $110 million in research and development (R&D) and marketing programs annually to provide benefit to industry and the wider community.

Hort Innovation is seeking a suitably qualified, experienced and capable delivery partner for the project: Revisiting brown etch of pumpkins (VG22012). The service provider is expected to appoint a suitably qualified PhD student to undertake the project.

This project aims to understand the mechanism by which brown etch occur in pumpkins and then use this information to develop management strategies for field control. The work aims to sequence DNA of healthy pumpkin, early stage etch, and ‘petrified wood’ pumpkin skin samples. These will then be used to identify the whole range of genes that are activated or silenced as etch develops.

The work encompasses two main approaches (below) to determine the underlying causes and mechanism of brown etch in pumpkins. The working hypothesis is that there are cells in the areas where the lesions will eventually develop that are fundamentally different in terms of their metabolism and/or physiology and/or morphology.

1. Optical and transmission electron microscopy is expected to be used to characterise cells from 3D sections in tissue where brown etch can be observed under white light; or under UV light; and cells from control tissue where there is no evidence of the condition. This will be conducted in both butternut and kent pumpkins.

2. Once this is determined, cells and tissues at the early stages of lesions will be sampled for metabolic and transcriptomic analyses. Combining these two approaches and the use of early-stage tissue will enable a detailed understanding of the underlying molecular basis of the onset of the lesions.

Hort Innovation has prepared a Request for Proposal (RFP) document that provides background information, outlines the scope of services, the procurement process and the information required from interested parties.