Grapevine Trunk Diseases in British Columbia: Incidence and Characterization of the Fungal Pathogens Associated with Esca and Petri Diseases of Grapevine

Abstract

Esca and Petri disease are two economically important grapevine diseases worldwide. This study reports for the first time the occurrence of both diseases on grapevines in British Columbia (BC) and subsequently in Canada. Visual assessment of 55,699 vines in 118 vineyards revealed a low incidence of esca with only 104 (0.2%) vines showing foliar symptoms. Young vine decline (YVD) was observed in 1,910 (7.8%) of 24,487 monitored young vines and in 52 (8%) of 654 young vines used as re-plants in mature vineyards. In 8 of 51 monitored young vineyards, YVD-affected vines ranged between 15 and 55%. Morphological studies along with DNA analyses of the ITS1-5.8S-ITS2, and part of the β-tubulin, actin, and translation elongation factor 1-α gene regions, allowed us to identify Cadophora luteoolivacea, Phaeomoniella chlamydospora, Phaeoacremonium iranianum, Togninia fraxinopennsylvanica, Togninia minima, and the novel species Phaeoacremonium canadense and Phaeoacremonium roseum from esca and Petri disease infected vines in BC. This study includes for the first time the EF1-α DNA marker in Phaeoacremonium spp. delineation. Pathogenicity studies showed all seven fungi to cause vascular symptoms similar to those observed in esca and Petri disease infected vines. Additionally, the “tiger-stripes” foliar symptom of esca was successfully reproduced when healthy potted vines were inoculated with BC isolates of Pa. chlamydospora, Pm. canadense, Pm. iranianum, T. fraxinopennsylvanica, and T. minima.

Fungal trunk pathogens associated with wood decay of pistachio trees in Iran

“…aleophilum. This species is the most common Phaeoacremonium species found associated with esca and Petri diseases in grapevines (Mostert et al, 2006) however, it has been also isolated from other woody trees, such as A. chinensis and O. europea in Italy (Crous & Gams, 2000), Malus domestica in South Africa (Cloete et al, 2011) and USA (Úrbez-Torres et al, 2013), and Prunus spp. (Damm et al, 2008) and Pyrus communis in South Africa (Cloete et al, 2011).…”

“…Species of this genus are known to cause die-back or decline symptoms on various woody hosts worldwide (Mostert et al, 2006). Forty three species of Phaeoacremonium have been described from different plant species worldwide (Crous et al, 1996;Dupont et al, 2000;Groenewald et al, 2001;Mostert et al, 2005Mostert et al, , 2006Damm et al, 2008;Essakhi et al, 2008;Graham et al, 2009;Gramaje et al, 2009Gramaje et al, , 2012Gramaje et al, , 2014Raimondo et al, 2014;Úrbez-Torres et al, 2014). Thus far, 10 species of this genus have been reported from various woody trees in Iran (Mostert et al, 2006;Gramaje et al, 2009;Mohammadi & Banihashemi, 2012;Mohammadi, 2012Mohammadi, , 2013Mohammadi, , 2014Mohammadi et al, 2013aMohammadi et al, , 2014Soltaninejad et al, 2013;Kazemzadeh Chakusary et al, 2014;Sami et al, 2014), however the occurrence of these species and associated Botryosphaeriaceae spp.…”

Phaeoacremonium: From esca disease to phaeohyphomycosis

“…This Phaeoacremonium database including all of the known Phaeoacremonium species can be accessed from the website of the Centraalbureau voor Schimmelcultures (www.cbs.knaw.nl/phaeoacremonium/). More recently, Urbez-Torres et al (2014) combined the translation elongation factor 1-a with other DNA markers in multi-locus phylogenetic analyses to describe two new species of Phaeoacremonium, namely Phaeoacremonium canadense, and Phaeoacremonium roseum.…”

“…The identification of Phaeoacremonium isolates from plant hosts to species level are commonly done by sequencing multiple genes (Groenewald et al 2001;Mostert et al 2005Mostert et al , 2006Damm et al 2008;Essakhi et al 2008;Graham et al 2009;Gramaje et al 2009bGramaje et al , 2014Urbez-Torres et al 2014) or by comparing only b-tubulin gene sequences (Moyo et al 2014). Phaeoacremonium isolates obtained from human infections are identified using either b-tubulin gene sequences (Baddley et al 2006 Since it is known that ITS does not distinguish all species of Phaeoacremonium (Mostert et al 2005;, the use of this gene region alone is not advised.…”

“…are currently recognized (Crous et al 1996;Dupont et al 2000;Groenewald et al 2001;Mostert et al 2005Mostert et al , 2006Damm et al 2008;Essakhi et al 2008;Graham et al 2009;Gramaje et al 2009bGramaje et al , 2012Gramaje et al , 2014Raimondo et al 2014;Urbez-Torres et al 2014). These include five species described as Togninia spp.…”