Sentinel arboreta as ‘bridge environment’ to study novel host-pathogens interactions and detect potentially alien plant pathogens
Carmen Morales-Rodriguez: DIBAF-University of Tuscia
<div>The sentinel arboreta concept has been recently proposed as an efficient strategy to identify potential exotic plant pathogens aggressive to native tree species from a geographical area. In fact, the close contact in the same arboretum of tree species from different areas in the worlds facilitates host jump by potential plant pathogens and expression of novel host-pathogen interactions. In fall 2015 a survey was carried out on about 40 different oak species from Europe, Asia and America planted together in a section of the Ataturk arboretum in Istanbul (Turkey). An array of foliar and bark symptoms were recorded on inspected oak species. Some foliar symptoms were shared among species from different geographical areas. Several fungal morphotypes were consistently associated with specific symptoms. Morphological and molecular detection were attempted to each fungal endophytes. Symptomatic and no-symptomatic tissues were processed by Illumina platform. The results indicate the efficiency of this approach to highlight the risk of host jump and insurgence of novel host-pathogen interactions between reciprocally alien species.</div>
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