FIGURE 5 - uploaded by Mounes Bakhshi
Content may be subject to copyright.
Pseudocercospora norchiensis. a. Leaf spots. b–c. Fasciculate conidiophores. d–g. Conidia. Scale bars = 10 μm.
Source publication
Species of Pseudocercospora have gained much attention in recent years owing to their phytopathogenic relevance, and worldwide occurrence on a wide range of economically important hosts. Although these fungi are common in Iran, they have generally been poorly studied and no cultures have been preserved for molecular analyses. The present paper repr...
Citations
... The deficiency of differential characteristics in Pseudocercospora and Cercosporoid genera, accompanied by substantial instability within species, makes it difficult for species classification in this collection of fungi (Bakhshi et al., 2014). Molecular analysis and micromorphological studies of the conidiogenesis, and the features of the conidiogenous loci led to the characterization of the causal organism as Pseudocercospora Crous and Braun (Pretorius et al., 2003). ...
Pseudocercospora fruit and leaf spot (PFLS), also known as angular leaf spot of citrus, is a devastating fungal disease that poses a significant threat to citrus production, profitability and food security in sub-Saharan Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. In the present review, we explore current knowledge regarding PFLS management initiatives, including cultural practices, chemical control strategies and biological interventions. Furthermore, this review highlights the challenges faced in controlling PFLS and emphasizes the urgent need for sustainable and cost-effective solutions to combat the disease. We discuss recent advancements and emerging prospects in understanding PFLS, including novel approaches for disease management and the potential for developing resistant citrus cultivars through breeding programmes or genetic modification. By synthesizing existing research findings and identifying gaps in knowledge, this review aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of PFLS and its impact on food security. We emphasize the importance of collaborative efforts, knowledge exchange and developing integrated disease management strategies to control PFLS and mitigate its detrimental effects on citrus production and farmers' livelihoods in affected regions.
... Pseudocercospora (family: Mycosphaerellaceae; order: Mycosphaerellales) is a genus of ascomycetous fungi with cosmopolitan species usually growing under a wide range of climatic conditions and occurring on a wide variety of plant hosts as either phytopathogens, endophytes, saprobes, or biological control of weeds [12,13] . This genus has previously been associated with the anamorphic or asexual state of the genus Mycosphaerella (e.g., the anamorph P. fijiensis for the teleomorph M. fijiensis) but was now recognized as a holomorphic genus in compliance with the recent modification of the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN) in 2011 during the annual Botanical Congress in Australia [14] . ...
Banana (Musa spp.) holds immense significance on both global and local scales as a source of nutrition, economic stability, environmental stability, and cultural significance. However, plant diseases have greatly impacted the overall production and yield of banana plantations, specifically, diseases caused by fungi. This paper explores the Sigatoka leaf spot complex, its associated fungi, factors that influence disease incidence and spread, and management measures of the disease. The Black Sigatoka is identified as the greatest threat due to its wide-ranging impact on banana cultivars. Further endangering banana production is disease dissemination through wind, rain, and ascospores. Here we emphasizee the significance of in-depth comprehension of disease characteristics and progression stages, crucial for devising effective management strategies and safeguarding sustainable banana farming. This paper presents knowledge gaps and challenges in the control and management of the Sigatoka complex. This includes emerging fungicide resistance, sustainable disease management, integrated disease management, monitoring and early detection, international collaboration, climate change impacts, and education and extension services. To fill knowledge gaps and overcome challenges, collaboration among researchers, industry players, government bodies, and international organizations is essential, prioritizing research and outreach to advance sustainable disease management for the global banana industry, mindful of ecological and economic consequences.
... In this study, strain Yb-1 was identified as a strain of B. velezensis based on the morphological characteristics and sequence analysis of the 16S rRNA gene, the gyrA gene, and the gyrB gene. Polygene molecular identification can improve the accuracy of identification, which has been fully affirmed in modern molecular biology [35][36][37]. B. velezensis has been reported to have a variety of biocontrol functions, such as inhibiting pathogen growth in vitro [38], promoting plant growth [39], and controlling plant diseases [40]. A potential biocontrol strain can usually inhibit the growth of a variety of pathogens [41,42]. ...
Colletotrichum capsici is one of the most important pathogens on chili peppers. Unreasonable application of chemical fungicides will lead to threats to human and animal health, environmental damage, and increased fungicide resistance to pathogens. As an alternative strategy, biological control has been paid more and more attention by academics. In this study, the Yb-1 strain was isolated from healthy cucumber leaves, which could significantly restrict the mycelium growth of C. capsici and Botrytis cinerea, with inhibition rates of 93.49% and 74.03%, respectively. Strain Yb-1 was identified as Bacillus velezensis by morphological features and 16S rRNA gene, gyrA gene, and gyrB gene sequence analysis. When pepper seeds were treated with different concentrations of bacterial suspension, we found that a medium-concentration treatment (104 CFU/mL and 105 CFU/mL) could promote seed germination and growth, while high-concentration treatments (108 CFU/mL) limited seed germination and growth. In addition, the root-irrigation method, acupuncture-leaf method, and leaf-cutting method were used to evaluate the safety of strain Yb-1 on peppers. The results indicated that Yb-1 did not affect the normal growth of peppers. The results of further field trials showed that the control effect of strain Yb-1 on pepper anthracnose was 59.45%. Thus, the strain B. velezensis Yb-1 has great biocontrol potential for pepper anthracnose and promotes plant growth.
... The genus Psedocercospora was previously considered as an anamorphic state of Mycosphaerella or having mycosphaerella-like teleomorphs, but it is now treated as a genus based on phylogeny and morphology [1,[25][26][27][28]. Now members within this genus are distinguished from each other based on combined approaches of host association, conidia characters and gene sequences [1]. ...
Ligustrum japonicum is a common ornamental tree species in China. However, leaf spot disease has emerged in Rizhao City, Shandong Province of China in recent years. Members of Pseudocercospora are usually known as plant pathogens, mainly causing leaf spots and blights. Species of this genus are distinguished mainly based on morphological differences on the host plants, as well as the molecular data. A new species named Pseudocercospora rizhaoensis on Ligustrum japonicum is introduced herein based on morphology and molecular data of combined ITS, LSU, act, tef1 and rpb2 sequences. Koch’s postulates were confirmed by a pathogenicity test, re-isolation and identification.
... Molecular studies of foliar fungi occurring on diverse fruit and forest trees in recent years, revealed a huge diversity of dothideomycetous taxa on these hosts in Iran (Bakhshi et al. 2014(Bakhshi et al. , 2019(Bakhshi et al. , 2021aBakhshi and Arzanlou 2017;Braun et al. 2020). Although Eucalyptus spp. ...
In 2007, Toxicocladosporium was established as new dematiaceous fungal genus in the family Cladosporiaceae that includes numerous plant pathogenic, epiphytic, endophytic, and saprobic fungi. A subsequent investigation on members of leaf-inhabiting fungi in Iran resulted in the identification of two new species belonging to the genus Toxicocladosporium associated with Eucalyptus leaves, described here as T. crousianum and T. eucalyptorum spp. nov. These novel taxa form independent lineages distinct from other taxa, based on morphological and multi-locus phylogenetic analyses. Detailed descriptions and illustrations of these two new taxa are presented. Additionally, the genus Toxicocladosporium represents a new fungal record for Iran.
... Based on multi-gene phylogenetic analysis, Crous et al. (2013) proved that Pseudocercospora species are host specific with a few exceptions. Presently, the phylogenetic analysis based on multigene sequence data is being used to understand the regional diversity and describe new species of Pseudocercospora (Bakhshi et al. 2014;Nakashima et al. 2016;Shivas et al. 2015;Park et al. 2015;Singh et al. 2021;Yadav et al. 2021;Meswaet et al. 2021). ...
A new species of Pseudocercospora is discovered causing foliar disease on the medicinal plant Rauvolfia serpentina (Apocynaceae) from India. The new species is described and illustrated on the morphology of asexual-morphs, growth characters and multigene phylogeny. Morphologically, new species has similar characters with allied species in Pseudocercospora but differs in having catenate and branched conidia. Phylogenetic analysis using combined LSU, ITS, ACT and TEF1α data supports the isolate to be a new species of Pseudocercospora (Capnodiales, Mycosphaerellaceae).
... Pseudocercospora, typified by P. vitis was introduced by Spegazzini (1910) and the species are morphologically variable (Bakhshi et al. 2014). The genus was previously recognized as an asexual genus linked to Mycosphaerella, but it is now treated as a holomorphic genus with mycosphaerellalike sexual morphs Kirk et al. 2013). ...
... The generic concept was revised in several studies and multi-gene sequence data provides significant support for the generic circumscription of Pseudocercospora (Crous et al. 2000. Molecular analyses revealed that the pseudocercospora-morphology evolved more than once in Mycosphaerellaceae (Bakhshi et al. 2014). Phylogenetic analysis based on multi-locus sequence data (ITS, act and tef) provides the delineation of most species and it has been used to identify phytopathogenic species and to understand the regional diversity of Pseudocercospora species (Bakhshi et al. 2014;Crous et al. 2015;Shivas et al. 2015). ...
... Molecular analyses revealed that the pseudocercospora-morphology evolved more than once in Mycosphaerellaceae (Bakhshi et al. 2014). Phylogenetic analysis based on multi-locus sequence data (ITS, act and tef) provides the delineation of most species and it has been used to identify phytopathogenic species and to understand the regional diversity of Pseudocercospora species (Bakhshi et al. 2014;Crous et al. 2015;Shivas et al. 2015). There is a need to screen further loci for a better delimitation of species. ...
Fungi play vital roles in ecosystems as endophytes, pathogens and saprobes. The current estimate of fungal diversity is highly
uncertain, ranging from 1.5 to 12 million, but only around 150,000 species have been named and classified to date. Since
the introduction of DNA based methods for species identification, the number of newly described taxa has increased from
approximately 1000 to around 2000 yearly. This demonstrates the importance of DNA based methods to identify and distinguish species, especially cryptic species. Many novel species from recent studies have been found in historically understudied
regions and habitats, but these still represent only a small percentage of the estimated species. In this paper, we examine 16
genera from the top 40 most speciose genera as listed in Species Fungorum as case studies to examine the diversity of taxa in
each genus. The genera treated herein are Cercospora, Diaporthe, Meliola, Passalora, Phyllachora, Phyllosticta, Pseudocercospora, Ramularia (ascomycetes) and Cortinarius, Entoloma, Inocybe, Marasmius, Psathyrella, Puccinia, Russula, Uromyces
(basidiomycetes). We critically evaluate the number of species in these genera and correlate these numbers with the number
of entries in GenBank. We introduce 18 new species Apiospora multiloculata, Candolleomyces thailandensis, Cortinarius
acutoproximus, Cortinarius melleoalbus, Cortinarius pacificus, Cortinarius parvoacetosus, Diaporthe guizhouensis, Entoloma
pseudosubcorvinum, Inocybe meirensongia, Marasmius albulus, Marasmius obscuroaurantiacus, Meliola camporesii, Phyllachora siamensis, Phyllosticta doitungensis, Picipes yuxiensis, Pseudocercospora vignae, Puccinia maureanui and Russula
inornata. We also introduce a new record of Candolleomyces cladii-marisci and Inocybe iringolkavensis. We discuss the
genera Colletotrichum and Pleurotus that are speciose, but do not occur in the top 40. We hypothesize whether there might be
more species in these genera and discuss why these genera have some of the largest number of species.
... Pseudocercospora belongs to Mycosphaerellaceae (Capnodiales, Dothideomycetes), and several species have Mycosphaerella-like sexual morphs Hyde et al. 2013;Kirk et al. 2013). It is a cosmopolitan genus of phytopathogenic fungi associated with many plant species, including several economically relevant hosts (Bakhshi et al. 2014;Crous et al. 2013). P. cruenta represents a distinct pathogen specific to Vigna and Phaseolus species (Crous and Braun 2003;Hsieh and Goh 1990 (Kamal 2010). ...
... Phylogenetic analysis The phylogenetic tree was constructed using the ITS region sequence extracted from the assembled genome sequence. The ITS region sequences of ex-type and reliably named strains, and sequences from Bakhshi et al. (2014) and Crous et al. (2013) were acquired from GenBank based on the closest similarity of the BLASTn search. MAFFT v. 7.0 (Katoh and Standley 2013) was used to align the sequences. ...
Draft genome assemblies of Fusarium marasasianum, Huntiella abstrusa, two
Immersiporthe knoxdaviesiana isolates, Macrophomina pseudophaseolina, Macrophomina
phaseolina, Naganishia randhawae, and Pseudocercospora cruenta
... This phylogenetic analysis showed many deeply branching lineages of low support ( Figure S1). Recent discovery of new Pseudocercospora species in sampling expeditions from tropical and subtropical environments (Bakshi et al., 2014;Silva et al., 2016) and taxonomy studies (Quaedvlieg et al., 2012;Crous et al., 2013;Bakhshi et al., 2014;Nakashima et al., 2016;Silva et al., 2016), had revealed that the Pseudocercospora genus is highly diverse and has not been fully explored yet. Nevertheless, we could identify four deeply branching clades with good support, Clades A to D ( Figure S1). ...
Abstract Pseudocercospora ulei is the causal agent of South American Leaf Blight (SALB), the main disease affecting Hevea brasiliensis rubber tree, a native species to the Amazon. Rubber tree is a major crop in South American countries and SALB disease control strategies would benefit from the availability of genomic resources for the fungal pathogen. Here, we assembled and annotated the P. ulei genome. Shotgun sequencing was performed using second and third generation sequencing technologies. We present the first P. ulei high-quality genome assembly, the largest among Mycosphaerellaceae, with 93.8 Mbp, comprising 215 scaffolds, an N50 of 2.8 Mbp and a BUSCO gene completeness of 97.5%. We identified 12,745 protein-coding gene models in the P. ulei genome with 756 genes encoding secreted proteins and 113 genes encoding effector candidates. Most of the genome (80%) is composed of repetitive elements dominated by retrotransposons of the Gypsy superfamily. P. ulei has the largest genome size among Mycosphaerellaceae, with the highest TE content. In conclusion, we have established essential genomic resources for a wide range of studies on P. ulei and related species.
... The mainland of Iran is well-known as an area with enormous biodiversity, including a very wide range of vascular plants which are the basis for a huge diversity of foliicolous fungi, including cercosporoid hyphomycetes. Some genera of cercosporoid fungi of Iran, e.g., Cercospora (Bakhshi et al. 2015a(Bakhshi et al. , b, 2018Bakhshi 2019;Bakhshi and Zare 2020) and Pseudocercospora (Bakhshi et al. 2014;Braun et al. 2020), have been relatively well-documented in recent years based on recent molecular revisions of these genera Crous et al. 2013). Nevertheless, except for Nothopassalora personata (Bakhshi and Zare 2020), no molecular studies have so far been conducted on other passalora-like species known from Iran. ...
... Amplification and sequencing of seven nuclear loci, i.e., 28S nrRNA gene (LSU), internal transcribed spacer regions and intervening 5.8S nrRNA gene (ITS) of the nrDNA operon, actin (ACT ), translation elongation factor 1-α (TEF1-α), calmodulin (CAL), histone H3 (HIS), and DNA-directed RNA polymerase II second largest subunit (RPB2) were performed with primers LR0R + LR5 (Vilgalys & Hester 1990), V9G (De Hoog & Gerrits van den Ende 1998) + ITS4 (White et al. 1990), ACT-512F + ACT-783R (Carbone and Kohn 1999), EF1-728F (Carbone andKohn 1999) + EF-2 (O'Donnell et al. 1998), CAL-228F (Carbone and Kohn 1999) + CAL-2Rd , CYLH3F + CYLH3R (Crous et al. 2004b), and RPB2-5F2 (Sung et al. 2007)/RPB2-f5f + fRPB2-7cR , respectively. PCR reaction mixtures and conditions outlined by Bakhshi et al. (2014Bakhshi et al. ( , 2015a were followed for standard amplification and subsequent sequencing of the LSU, ITS, ACT , TEF1-α, CAL, and HIS loci. The RPB2 PCR mixture consisted of 10-15 ng genomic DNA, 1 × PCR buffer (SinaClon, Iran), 2 mM MgCl2 (SinaClon), 50 μM of each dNTP, 0.7 μL DMSO, 0.28 μM of each primer, and 0.5 Unit GoTaq® Flexi DNA polymerase (SinaClon). ...
... The Hyrcanian forests have always attracted the attention of biologists because they are ancient and an important biodiversity "hot spot" (Scharnweber et al. 2007;Yousefzadeh et al. 2017). In recent years, several molecular studies of fungal taxa occurring on forest trees in Hyrcanian forests of Iran revealed several novel mycosphaerellaceous species on some important trees of this area, e.g., Ramularia taleshina M. Bakhshi & Arzanlou (Bakhshi and Arzanlou 2017) (Bakhshi et al. 2014;Braun et al. 2020). The introduction of a novel taxon, Prathigadoides gleditsiae-caspicae on Caspian locust, an important native forest tree in Hyrcanian region, further confirms the diversity of mycosphaerellaceous taxa in this area. ...
Species of Passalora s. lat. are phytopathogenic fungi that generally cause leaf spot diseases on a broad variety of plants throughout the world. During our investigations exploring cercosporoid fungi associated with leaf spot symptoms of fruit and forest trees in northern and north-western Iran, several passalora-like fungi were isolated from symptomatic leaves of trees belonging to the Fabaceae, Malvaceae, Rosaceae, and Ulmaceae. A polyphasic taxonomic approach applying molecular data, morphological features, and host data was employed to identify the isolates. In a multi-gene phylogenetic analysis (LSU, ITS, and RPB2), these isolates are clustered in four clades in the Mycosphaerellaceae. The taxa encompassed Paracercosporidium microsorum on Tilia platyphyllos, Prathigadoides gleditsiae-caspicae gen. et. sp. nov. on Gleditsia caspica, Pruniphilomyces circumscissus on Prunus avium and Prunus cerasus, and Sirosporium celtidis on Celtis australis. The new genus Prathigadoides and its type species Prathigadoides gleditsiae-caspicae are molecularly distinct from all phylogenetically related genera, and some characteristics of the conidiophores and conidia differ from those of the morphologically similar species Prathigada condensata on the North America Gleditsia triacanthos.
