Morphology, Phylogeny, and Pathogenicity of Pestalotioid Species on <i>Camellia oleifera</i> in China

oleh: Lingling Li, Qin Yang, He Li

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: MDPI AG 2021-12-01

Deskripsi

Tea-oil tree (<i>Camellia oleifera</i>) is an important edible oil woody plant with a planting area of over 3,800,000 hectares in southern China. Pestalotioid fungi are associated with a wide variety of plants worldwide along with endophytes, pathogens, and saprobes. In this study, symptomatic leaves of <i>C. oleifera</i> were collected from Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Hunan, and Jiangsu Provinces and pestalotioid fungi are characterized based on combined sequence data analyses of internal transcribed spacer (ITS), beta tubulin (<i>tub2</i>), and translation elongation factor 1-alpha (<i>tef-1α</i>) coupled with morphological characteristics. As a result, seven species were confirmed, of which five species are described as new viz. <i>N. camelliae-oleiferae</i>, <i>P. camelliae-oleiferae</i>, <i>P. hunanensis</i>, <i>P. nanjingensis</i>, <i>P.</i><i>nanningensis</i>, while the other two are reported as known species, viz., <i>N. cubana</i> and <i>N. iberica</i>. Pathogenicity assays showed that all species except for <i>P. nanjingensis</i> developed brown lesions on healthy leaves and <i>P. camelliae-oleiferae</i> showed stronger virulence.