Genetic Variability and Population Structure of the Wheat Foot Rot Fungus, Fusarium culmorum, in Tunisia

The random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) method was used to investigate the genetic variability and population structure of Fusarium culmorum isolated from wheat stem bases. A total of 108 isolates, representing seven geographically distinct populations, was collected from five climatic regions in Tunisia. Pseudo-allelic frequencies were estimated at each of the 25 putative RAPD loci analyzed by scoring for the presence or absence of amplified fragments; 92 haplotypes were found among the 108 strains. The analysis of the population structure did not reveal any trend with regard to geographic origin. Total gene diversity (H_T^* = 0.318) was mostly attributable to diversity within populations (H_S^* = 0.308). Analysis of molecular variance confirmed that most of the genetic variability was within populations. Genetic differentiation among populations was low to moderate (G_ST^* ranged from 0 to 0.190 and averaged 0.041 over all loci). Cluster analysis with UPGMA using genetic distances did not reveal any spatial clustering of the isolates collected from the different geographic regions. Based on these results, we conclude that the F. culmorum isolates recovered from different regions in Tunisia might be part of a single population pool.