Host specificity of co‐infecting Botryosphaeriaceae on ornamental and forest trees in the Western Balkans

Abstract

Summary The Botryosphaeriaceae is a diverse family of endophytes and fungal pathogens of mainly woody plants. We considered the host range and distribution of these fungi by sampling diseased ornamental and forest trees and shrubs in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, spanning a Mediterranean and a Continental climatic region. In total, ten Botryosphaeriaceae species were identified in the Western Balkans and with the exception of Sphaeropsis visci and Phaeobotryon cupressi, which occurred on one host, all the species had a broader host range. Phaeobotryon cupressi was found only in the Mediterranean region and S. visci, Dothiorella sp., Dothiorella sarmentorum and Diplodia seriata were present only in the Continental region. Pathogenicity tests were conducted on a variety of hosts from which the Botryosphaeriaceae species were isolated. These included leaves and/or stems of seedlings of 21 hosts, and cut leaves and/or branches of six hosts. Moreover, stems of seedlings of Chamaecyparis lawsoniana, Cedrus deodara, Picea omorika, Pinus patula and Eucalyptus grandis were inoculated as hosts from which some or all of the Botryosphaeriaceae species used for inoculation were not isolated. Inoculations showed that the majority of these fungi could also co‐infect hosts other than those from which they were isolated. The results suggest that most of the species have broad host ranges and can potentially cause disease on a broad range of tree species under certain conditions.

Genetic uniformity characterizes the invasive spread of Neofusicoccum parvum and Diplodia sapinea in the Western Balkans

“…Symptomatic samples were mostly collected in the cities, but also in plantations, forest stands, nurseries of ornamental plants and two isolates of D. sapinea were collected from Pinus radiata D. Don trees grown on Mt. Athos in Greece (Supporting Information Table S1; Zlatković et al, ; Zlatković et al, ; Zlatković et al, ).…”

“…From each tree, isolations were made from symptomatic and asymptomatic tissues as described previously by Zlatković et al (). Fifty‐six isolates of N. parvum and 87 isolates of D. sapinea were identified in previous studies based on the DNA sequence data of the ITS region, TEF‐1‐α, β‐tubulin, large subunit rRNA and RPB2 (Zlatković et al, ). Haploid cultures established from hyphal‐tip transfers used in this study are maintained in the culture collection (CMW) of the Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute, University of Pretoria, South Africa.…”

“…Microsatellite analyses were conducted on a subset of N. parvum and D. sapinea isolates identified in the previous studies, including 46 isolates of N. parvum and 85 isolates of D. sapinea (Zlatković et al, ). Fungal cultures were grown on malt extract agar in Petri dishes for seven days, and DNA was extracted from the mycelium as previously described (Zlatković et al, ).…”

“…Neofusicoccum parvum and D. sapinea have recently been shown responsible for disease on various trees and shrubs in the Western Balkans region (Zlatković, Keča, Wingfield, Jami, & Slippers, ; Zlatković et al, ; Zlatković, Wingfield, Jami, & Slippers, ), but nothing is known about the population genetics or biology of these species in this region. In this study, we determined genetic diversity and structure between different populations of N. parvum and D. sapinea .…”

Botryosphaeriaceae species causing dieback on Annonaceae in Brazil

“…Similarly, L. pseudotheobromae was the more virulent species on A. muricata , but could not be differentiated from the other species on atemoya. This may be attributable to a possible variation in levels of virulence between different isolates of the same species, as has already been observed for Macrophomina (Claudino & Soares, ); alternatively, each host may have responded differently to infection by each species, as was demonstrated by Coutinho et al () and Zlatković et al (). In future studies, these hypotheses could be verified by cross inoculation of the same isolates in these three hosts.…”