Publication no. P-2003-0221-01R

Ecology and Population Biology

Characterization of Colletotrichum Isolates from Tamarillo, Passiflora, and Mango in Colombia and Identification of a Unique Species from the Genus. Lucia Afanador-Kafuri, Dror Minz, Marcel Maymon, and Stanley Freeman. First author: Departamento de Ciencias Agronómicas, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Medellín, Colombia; second author: Institute of Soil, Water, and Environmental Sciences, ARO, The Volcani Center, P.O. Box 6, Bet Dagan 50250; and third and fourth authors: Department of Plant Pathology, ARO, The Volcani Center, P.O. Box 6, Bet Dagan 50250, Israel. Phytopathology 93:579-587. Accepted for publication 23 November 2002. Copyright 2003 The American Phytopathological Society.

This study was conducted to identify the species of Colletotrichum infecting tamarillo, mango, and passiflora in Colombia and to assess whether cross-infection between host species is occurring. Isolates of Colletotrichum spp. from tamarillo (n = 54), passiflora (n = 26), and mango (n = 15) were characterized by various molecular methods and by morphological criteria. Morphological characterization grouped the tamarillo isolates as C. acutatum and the passiflora and mango isolates as C. gloeosporioides. Species-specific primer analysis was reliable and confirmed grouping of the tamarillo isolates (besides Tom-6) as C. acutatum and the mango isolates (besides Man-76) as C. gloeosporioides. However, DNA of the passiflora isolates was not amplified by either C. acutatum- or C. gloeosporioides-specific primers, but reacted with a new primer, Col1, designed according to the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) 1 region of these isolates. Isolates Tom-6 and Man-76 also reacted positively with the Col1 primer. All the isolates reacting with the C. acutatum- and C. gloeosporioides-specific primers failed to react with primer Col1. Isolate Pass-35 from passiflora did not react with any of the taxon-specific primers. Arbitrarily primed polymerase chain reaction (ap-PCR), random amplified polymerase DNA (RAPD)-PCR, and A+T-rich DNA analyses delineated representative isolates into subgroups within the designated species. Molecular analyses indicated that the C. acutatum tamarillo isolates were uniform or clonal, whereas the C. gloeosporioides mango isolates and Colletotrichum passiflora isolates were heterogeneous. Likewise, sequence analysis of the complete ITS (ITS1-5.8S-ITS2) region identified certain isolates to their respective species: tamarillo isolates as C. acutatum; mango isolates as C. gloeosporioides; passiflora, Tom-6, and Man-76 isolates as a Colletotrichum sp. as yet undefined; and the Pass-35 isolate as an additional undefined Colletotrichum sp. Molecular analyses of the population of Colletotrichum isolates from passiflora, Tom-6 from tamarillo, and Man-76 from mango indicate that this population may not be host specific. Additional keywords: Glomerella cingulata, phylogeny, rDNA.