Abstract
Colletotrichum, the causative agent of anthracnose, is an important pathogen that invades the tea plant (Camellia sinensis). In this study, 38 isolates were obtained from the diseased leaves of tea plants collected in different areas of Zhejiang Province, China. A combination of multigene (ITS, ACT, GAPDH, TUB2, CAL, and GS) and morphology analyses showed that the 38 strains belonged to two different species, namely, C. camelliae (CC), and C. fructicola (CF). Pathogenicity tests revealed that CC was more invasive than CF. In vitro inoculation experiments demonstrated that CC formed acervuli at 72 hpi and developed appressoria on wound edges, but CF did not develop these structures. Under treatment with catechins and caffeine, the growth inhibition rates of CF were remarkably higher than those of CC, indicating that the nonpathogenic species CF was more vulnerable to catechins and caffeine. Growth condition testing indicated that CF grew at a wide temperature range of 15–35°C and that the optimum temperature for CC growth was 25°C. Growth of both CC and CF did not differ between acidic and weakly alkaline environments (pH 5–8), but the growth of CC was significantly reduced at pH values of 9 and 10. Furthermore, the PacC/RIM101 gene, which associated with pathogenicity, was identified from CC and CF genomes, and its expression was suppressed in the hyphae of both species under pH value of 5 and 10, and much lower expression level was detected in CC than that in CF at pH 6. These results indicated that temperature has more important effect than pH for the growth of two Colletotrichum species. In conclusion, the inhibition by secondary metabolite is an important reason why the pathogenicity by CC and CF are different to tea plant, although the environmental factors including pH and temperature effect the growth of two Colletotrichum species.
Highlights
Tea, which is produced by new shoots from tea plants [Camellia sinensis (L.) O
We aimed to identify Colletotrichum species isolated from Ca. sinensis by morphological characteristics and multigene molecular phylogeny, and explored the difference in the biological characteristics of the strains, determined the pathogenicity of the different strains of Colletotrichum, and preliminarily clarified the reason that the discrepancy occurred
The isolates were found to belong to two subclades, namely, C. camelliae (CC) and C. fructicola (CF)
Summary
Tea, which is produced by new shoots from tea plants [Camellia sinensis (L.) O. The buds and leaves of the tea plants suffer from many kinds of diseases, resulting in loss of revenue (Guo et al, 2014). Anthracnose is one of the main diseases of the tea plant. Survey results have shown that the morbidity associated with anthracnose, the development of which is related to temperature and humidity, is more serious in the southern region than in the northern region of China (Liu et al, 2016). When Colletotrichum invades Ca. sinensis, bottle-green, watery lesions emerge on the surface of the leaves early in infection, and the scabs enlarge over time. In the final phase of infection, dense tiny black dots called acervuli form on the lesion; the acervuli, which are small asexual fruiting bodies that can produce conidia which facilitate disease transmission, are the origin of disease spread (Liu et al, 2016)
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