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Biodiversity loss is mainly driven by human activity. While concern grows over the fate of hot spots of biodiversity, contemporary species losses still prevail in industrialized nations. Therefore, strategies were formulated to halt or reverse the loss, driven by evidence for its value for ecosystem services. Maintenance of the latter through conservation depends on correctly identified species. To this aim, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research is funding the GBOL project, a consortium of natural history collections, botanic gardens, and universities working on a barcode reference database for the country's fauna and flora. Several noticeable findings could be useful for future campaigns: (i) validating taxon lists to serve as a taxonomic backbone is time-consuming, but without alternative; (ii) offering financial incentives to taxonomic experts, often citizen scientists, is indispensable; (iii) completion of the libraries for widespread species enables analyses of environmental samples, but the process may not hold pace with technological advancements; (iv) discoveries of new species are among the best stories for the media; (v) a commitment to common data standards and repositories is needed, as well as transboundary cooperation between nations; (vi) after validation, all data should be published online via the BOLD to make them searchable for external users and to allow cross-checking with data from other countries.Key words: biodiversity assessment, citizen science, DNA barcoding, reference library, Germany.Résumé : La perte de biodiversité découle principalement de l'activité humaine. Tandis que les inquiétudes grandissent sur le sort des milieux à forte biodiversité, la disparition d'espèces contemporaines a toujours cours dans les pays industrialisés. Ainsi, des stratégies ont été proposées pour arrêter ou renverser ces pertes d'espèces, lesquelles interventions sont motivées par la valeur de la biodiversité en matière de services écosystémiques. Le maintien de ces services par le biais de la conservation dépend d'une identification correcte des espèces. C'est dans ce but que le Ministère fédéral de l'éducation et de la recherche de l'Allemagne a financé le projet GBOL, un consortium de collections d'histoire naturelle, de jardins botaniques et d'universités oeuvrant à développer une

Colonization of apples by ballistoconidium-forming fungi causes a new disorder, here named 'white haze'. White haze may occur in mild form in the field, but only becomes problematic after Ultra-Low Oxygen storage, and, therefore, may be considered as a postharvest disorder. All isolates, obtained using the spore-fall method, were morphologically identified as anamorphs of smut fungi belonging to the genus Tilletiopsis. Sequence analysis of the D1/D2 and the ITS domains of the rDNA revealed nine novel taxa scattered among the Exobasidiomycetidae (Ustilaginomycetes). Field experiments confirmed the erratic incidence of white haze over the years, and the development of the disorder seems to be enhanced at lower temperatures and a high relative humidity. Several scab fungicide treatments showed diminishing effects on the incidence of white haze.