Fusarium: two endophytic novel species from tropical grasses of northern Australia

Abstract

Two new species of Fusarium associated with Australian indigenous grasses in natural ecosystems are described as F. lyarnte and F. werrikimbe on the basis of morphology, DNA fingerprinting and phylogenetic analysis of EF-1α and β-tubulin sequence data. Isolates of these species were initially recovered from soil in the McGraths Creek area of central Australia and subsequently recovered from soil and stems of the indigenous grass Sorghum interjectum from Litchfield National Park in the Northern Territory, and from Sorghum leiocladum from Werrikimbe National Park in New South Wales. The common feature of both of these species is the production of large globose microconidia in false heads on polyphialides. Attempts to apply the biological species concept were unsuccessful.

Fusarium species associated with plants in Australia

“…Most of these surveys have focussed on the distribution of Fusarium species in soil. Only recently have other substrates, e.g., the stems of native and introduced grasses (Phan et al 2004;Walsh et al 2010) been systematically assessed and examined in any detail. In some cases the Fusarium species colonizing the aboveground plant stems are not the same as those found in the soil or colonizing the plant roots (Walsh 2007).…”

“…A number of new species have been described (e.g., Britz et al 2002;Marasas et al 1998Marasas et al , 2001Zeller et al 2003;Phan et al 2004;Walsh et al 2010) and there has been an increasing recognition of the presence of cryptic species (Klittich et al 1997;Leslie et al 2001;Steenkamp et al 2002). These cryptic species are morphologically indistinguishable but are either biologically or phylogenetically distinct, e.g., Britz et al (1999), Klittich and Leslie (1992), and .…”

In search of new Fusarium species

“…Species that we alone have described from such habitats include F. armeniacum (Burgess and Summerell, 2000;Burgess et al, 1993), F. aywerte (Benyon et al, 2000;Sangalang et al, 1995), F. babinda , F. gaditjirrii (Phan et al, 2004), F. konzum (Zeller et al, 2003), F. lyarnte (Walsh et al, 2010), F. nurragi (Benyon et al, 2000;Sangalang et al, 1995) and F. werrikimbee (Walsh et al, 2010). These species often are of little or no agricultural or economic importance, and may never have been isolated from an agricultural crop even though the native area from which they were collected is in the midst of a significant agricultural growing area.…”

Molecular identification and mycotoxin production of Lilium longiflorum-associated fusaria isolated from two geographic locations in the United States

“…Among them, the incidence of Fusariumrelated infection is of the greatest significance in Easter lily and other bulb crops (Bald et al 1971). Fusarium is a diverse and widely distributed genus with nutritional modes ranging from saprotrophic to pathogenic in nature (Geiser et al 2004;Proctor et al 2010;Walsh et al 2010). Best known for their plant pathogenic and mycotoxin-producing members, there are also endophytic fusaria that live within the plant tissue causing no visible signs of infection.…”

“…Best known for their plant pathogenic and mycotoxin-producing members, there are also endophytic fusaria that live within the plant tissue causing no visible signs of infection. Some of the endophytic fungi can become pathogenic, but only when the host plant is subjected to unfavourable environmental and developmental conditions (Walsh et al 2010).…”