Ecological speciation within thePhytophthoragenus

Abstract

Over the past few years, symptoms akin to late blight disease have been reported on a variety of crop plants in South America. Despite the economic importance of these crops, the causal agents of the diseases belonging to the genus Phytophthora have not been completely characterized. In this study, we used an integrative approach that leveraged morphological, ecological, and genetic approaches to explore cryptic speciation within P. infestans sensu lato. We described a new Phytophthora species collected in Colombia from tree tomato (Solanum betaceum), a semi-domesticated fruit. All morphological traits and population genetic analyses, using microsatellite data and a reduced representation of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data, support the description of the new species, Phytophthora betacei sp. nov. We have demonstrated that ecological differences are important in the persistence of P. infestans and P. betacei as genetically isolated units across an overlapping area in the northern Andes.

Pathogens which threaten food security: Phytophthora infestans, the potato late blight pathogen

“…Disease on other crops, such as Solanum quitoense (naranjilla or lulo) or Solanum betaceum (tree tomato or tamarillo) has been reported as being caused by P. infestans sensu lato. This is complicated by the fact that P. infestans is a species complex and but it is unsure if these reports refer to P. infestans, Phytophthora andina (Oliva et al 2010), or Phytophthora betacei (Mideros et al 2018), species that are closely related to P. infestans.…”