Paecilomyces farinosus destroys powdery mildew colonies in detached leaf cultures but not on whole plants

Since 2001, several isolates of Blumeria graminis, the causal agent of cereal powdery mildew, maintained on detached leaves at the John Innes Centre, Norwich, UK, have spontaneously become infected with an unknown filamentous fungus whose mycelia have quickly overgrown the powdery mildew colonies and destroyed them completely. A total of five isolates of the contaminant were obtained and identified as Paecilomyces farinosus based on morphological characteristics and rDNA ITS sequence data. To determine whether these P. farinosus isolates can be considered as biocontrol agents (BCAs) of powdery mildews, we studied the interactions between P. farinosus and the following four powdery mildew species: B. graminis f.sp. hordei infecting barley, Oidium neolycopersici infecting tomato, Golovinomyces orontii infecting tobacco and Podosphaera fusca infecting cucumber. The powdery mildew colonies of all these four powdery mildew species were quickly destroyed by P. farinosus in leaf cultures but neither conidial suspensions nor cell-free culture filtrates of P. farinosus isolates could suppress the spread of powdery mildew infections on diseased barley, tomato, tobacco or cucumber plants in the greenhouse. It is concluded that P. farinosus cannot be considered as a promising BCA of powdery mildew infections although it can destroy powdery mildew colonies in detached leaf cultures and can be a menace during the maintenance of such cultures of cereal, apple, cucurbit and tomato powdery mildew isolates.     

Host range expansion in a powdery mildew fungus (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Golovinomyces</Emphasis> sp.) infecting <Emphasis Type="Italic">Arabidopsis thaliana</Emphasis>: <Emphasis Type="Italic">Torenia fournieri</Emphasis> as a new host

Since 2003, Torenia fournieri plants grown for experimental purposes were repeatedly infected by powdery mildew in a laboratory in Hungary. Based on morphological characteristics, the pathogen belonged to the mitosporic genus Oidium subgen. Reticuloidium, the anamorph stage of Golovinomyces. The rDNA ITS sequence was identical to that of two other powdery mildew fungi, infecting Arabidopsis and Veronica, respectively, in different parts of the world. According to a previous phylogenetic analysis of ITS and 28S rDNA sequences, those two powdery mildews belong to a recently evolved group of Golovinomyces characterized by multiple host range expansions during their evolution. Both the ITS sequence and the morphological data indicate that the powdery mildew anamorph infecting Torenia also belongs to this group. It is likely that the powdery mildew infections of the experimental T. fournieri plants, native to south-east Asia, were the result of a very recent host range expansion of a polyphagous Golovinomyces because (i) T. fournieri is absent from our region, except as an experimental plant grown in the laboratory, (ii) the powdery mildew fungus infecting this exotic plant belongs to a group of Golovinomyces where host range expansion is a frequent evolutionary scenario, (iii) cross-inoculation tests showed that this pathogen is also able to infect other plant species, notably A. thaliana and tobacco, and (iv) no Golovinomyces species are known to infect T. fournieri anywhere in the world. Although host range expansion has often been proposed as a common evolutionary process in the Erysiphales, and also in other biotrophic plant pathogens, this has not been clearly demonstrated in any case studies so far. To our knowledge, this is the first convincing case of a host range expansion event in the Erysiphales.     

Variation in the nrDNA ITS sequences of some powdery mildew species: do routine molecular identification procedures hide valuable information?

During the past years, nrDNA ITS sequences have supported the identification of many powdery mildew fungi because comprehensive analyses showed that differences in these sequences have always correlated with the delimitation of different species and formae speciales of the Erysiphales. Published data, obtained using direct sequencing of the PCR products, suggested that even one to five nucleotide differences in the ITS sequences delimit different, albeit closely related, species, and/or indicate differences in host range patterns. Here we show that such differences in the ITS sequences can be detected even in a single sample of a powdery mildew fungus. We sequenced the ITS region in 17 samples, representing six powdery mildew species, both directly and after cloning the PCR products. Among these, samples of O. longipes exhibited two or three, samples of O. neolycopersici three or four, those of an Oidium sp. from Chelidonium majus up to seven, and a sample of another Oidium sp. from Passiflora caerulea two different ITS types determined after cloning. No ITS nucleotide polymorphisms were found in samples of O. lycopersici and Erysiphe aquilegiae. This suggests that some powdery mildew taxa are more variable at the ITS level than others. Thus, although the ITS sequences determined by direct sequencing represent robust data useful in delimitation and phylogenetic analysis of distinct species of the Erysiphales, these need to be used with precaution, and preferably determined after cloning, especially when dealing with closely related taxa at species and sub-species levels. With this method a hitherto undetected genetic diversity of powdery mildews can be revealed.