Epicoccum italicum Q. Chen et al., Studies in Mycology. 87: 144. 2017

Description.

see Chen et al. (2017).

Materials examined.

China, Yunnan Province, Puer City, Jingdong Yizu Autonomous County, from healthy leaves of C. sinensis, 13 Jun 2020, Y. C. Wang, culture YCW 2005 .

Notes.

Phylogenetically, Epicoccum italicum formed a distinct lineage closely related to E. oryzae (Fig. 3). Epicoccum italicum produced epicoccoid conidia and clavate conidiomata (Chen et al. 2017). It was first isolated from seedlings of Acca sellowiana in Italy (Chen et al. 2017) and reported in the dairy setting (Rodríguez et al. 2023). In addition, this species significantly reduced both leaf area of soybean consumed aboveground by caterpillars and number of cysts produced belowground by nematodes (Rivera-Vega et al. 2022). In the present study, one strain was isolated from healthy tea plant leaves. This is the first report of E. italicum isolated from C. sinensis .