Pathogenicity and mycotoxin production by Fusarium proliferatum isolated from onion and garlic in Serbia

Abstract

Fusarium proliferatum can occur on a wide range of economically important vegetable plants but its role in disease is not always well established. In 2000 and 2001, from forty-one field samples of wilting onion and garlic plants in Serbia, F. proliferatum as the predominant fungal species was isolated from root and bulbs. Seventy isolates were firstly characterized for their sexual fertility and were shown to be mostly members of Gibberella intermedia (sixty-seven of seventy isolates, the remaining three isolates were unfertile), the sexual stage of F. proliferatum (syn. mating population D of G. fujikuroi complex). A selected set of eleven F. proliferatum isolates from both hosts were also tested for their pathogenicity and toxigenicity. Although onion and garlic plants were susceptible to all isolates, onion plants showed a significantly higher disease severity index. Six of the eleven isolates of F. proliferatum produced fumonisin B 1 from 25 to 3000 mg g À1 , and beauvericin from 400 to 550 mg g À1 ; ten isolates produced fusaric acid from 80 to 950 mg g À1 and moniliformin from 50 to 520 mg g À1 . Finally, all isolates produced fusaproliferin up to 400 mg g À1 . These results confirm F. proliferatum as an important pathogen of garlic and onion in Europe and that there is a potential mycotoxin accumulation risk in contaminated plants of both garlic and onion.

Genetic variation among Fusarium isolates from onion, and resistance to Fusarium basal rot in related Allium species

“…This species was reported on onion in USA (du Toit et al 2003), Serbia (Stankovic et al 2007), and Argentina (J. Valdez, personal communication).…”

“…Recently, F. proliferatum was found affecting onion (du Toit et al 2003;Stankovic et al 2007) and garlic (Dugan et al 2003). Other Fusarium species were reported in the past as minor onion pathogens (Entwistle 1990), but F. oxysporum is the most frequently found species causing onion basal rot.…”

Black Aspergilli and fumonisin contamination in onions purchased in Hungary

“…These isomers were found to be produced by A. awamori in a previous study . Previously another fumonisin producing fungus, Fusarium proliferatum has also been found to be able to infect onion bulbs (Dissanayake et al 2009a(Dissanayake et al , 2009bDu Toit et al 2003;Galvan et al 2008;Stankovic et al 2007). However, this species was not identified in any of the onion samples examined in this study (data not shown).…”

The effects of storage duration, temperature and cultivar on the severity of garlic clove rot caused by Fusarium proliferatum

“…Moreover, F. proliferatum produces a number of toxins apart from fumonisins, such as moniliformin (Marasas et al, 1984), beauvericin (Logrieco et al, 1998;Plattner and Nelson, 1994), fusaric acid (FA) (Bacon et al, 1996) and fusaroproliferin (Ritieni et al, 1995). Because fresh garlic is consumed broadly in many countries, the production of mycotoxins in cloves infected with F. proliferatum must not be disregarded (Palmero et al, 2010b;Stankovic et al, 2007;Stepien et al, 2011).…”