Identification and characterization of Cladosporium species associated with tea plants (Camellia sinensis) in China

Abstract

The tea plant (Camellia sinensis), an evergreen shrub in the Theaceae family, is one of the most important industrial crops, whose young leaves are made into various kinds of tea (Wang et al., 2016). Many microorganisms, such as pathogenic and endophytic fungi, bacteria and viruses, live in tea plants (Gao et al., 2016). Diseases caused by pathogenic fungi, such as tea leaf blight caused by Colletotrichum and tea blister blight caused by Exobasidium vexans, are commonly studied in tea plants (Mohktar & Nagao, 2019;Wan et al., 2021). Interestingly,