Abstract
Tomato plants displaying early blight symptoms were collected from different localities in the provinces of Assiut and Sohag, Egypt. The causal pathogens were isolated on potato dextrose agar plates. Pathogenicity tests with 48 isolates were carried out under greenhouse conditions on tomato cultivar (CV 844). All tested isolates caused symptoms of early blight disease with different degrees. The highest disease severity on tomato plants was found after inoculation with isolate No. 6 followed by isolates No. 20 and No. 31. The most pathogenic isolates were identified by sequence analysis using ITS1 and ITS4 primers. The analysis of the amplified sequences from fungal isolates No. 6, 20 and 31 displayed 99-100% nucleotide identity with Alternaria solani, Curvularia lunata and A. alternata, respectively. To our knowledge, this is the first report of Curvularia lunata as one of the causal pathogens of early blight disease of tomato plants in Egypt.
Highlights
Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) is an important horticultural crop and grown worldwide
The symptoms of early blight disease were large spots which spread over most parts of the plant (Fig.1)
Our observations on the disease symptoms incited by inoculation with the pathogenic strains are in agreement with the literature, both regarding shape and color as well as their first appearance on the lower leaves and spreading with increasing growth of plants [27]
Summary
Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) is an important horticultural crop and grown worldwide It is the world’s second most consumed vegetable crop after potato [1]. Characterization based on sequence analysis of genes of the internal transcribed spacer regions (ITS) of the rDNA is a useful tool to identify and characterize fungal isolates as presumed new species [13,14,15]. It has generally been found beneficial for research at species level and within species [15, 16]
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