Dothiorella viticola A.J.L. Phillips & J. Luque, Mycologia 97(5): 1118 (2005)

Index Fungorum number: IF 357425; Facesoffungi number: FoF11671, Fig. 8

Saprobic on branch of Morus sp. Sexual morph: see Luque et al. (2005). Asexual morph: Coelomycetous. Conidiomata 125–135 μm high × 105–120 μm diam. (x̄ = 130 × 110 μm, n = 10), pycnidial, solitary or gregarious, globose to subglobose, uniloculate, immersed, becoming erumpent at maturity. Ostiole single, central, circular, papillate. Conidiomata wall 10–30 μm diam., composed of thin-walled, brown cells of textura angularis, inner layer thin, hyaline. Conidiophores usually reduced to conidiogenous cells. Conidiogenous cells 6–12 × 2–5 μm (x̄ = 8 × 3 μm, n = 15), lining the pycnidial cavity, holoblastic, hyaline, cylindrical, discrete, determinate, smooth-walled. Conidia 16–22 × 8–12 μm (x̄ = 19 × 10 μm, n = 30), oblong to ovoid, straight, rounded at both ends, initially hyaline and aseptate, becoming brown and 1-septate often while attached to conidiogenous cells, slightly constricted at the septum.

Culture characteristics:— Conidia germinating on PDA within 24 h. Germ tubes produced from one side of the conidium. Colonies on PDA reaching 2.0– 2.5 cm diam. after 5 days at 16 °C, circular, medium dense, flat or effuse, slightly raised, fluffy to fairly fluffy, grey colour in front and black in reverse.

Material examined:— ITALY. Viale Salinatore - Forlì (province of Forlì-Cesena [FC]): on dead branch of Morus sp. (Moraceae), 3 February 2019, Erio Camporesi, (MFLU 19-0621, new host record), living culture MFLUCC 22- 0059.

Known hosts and distribution:— Dothiorella viticola has a cosmopolitan distribution in different host species, including Citrus sp. in the USA (Adesemoye & Eskalen 2011, Inderbitzin et al. 2010), Populus cathayana in China (Zhang et al. 2009), Poniciana gilliesii in France (Phillips et al. 2008), Prunus persica and P. salicina in South Africa (Damm et al. 2007), and Vitis vinifera in Australia, South Africa and Spain (Luque et al. 2005, de Wet et al. 2009, Qiu et al. 2011).

Notes:—Our collection is similar to the holotype of Dothiorella viticola (MFLU 18–1586) from pruned canes of Vitis vinifera in Spain (CBS 117009) (Luque et al. 2005). Both isolates have similar morphology, with separate or aggregated, erumpent, globose, uniloculate conidiomata, and a single, central, circular, and papillate ostiole. They have holoblastic and hyaline conidiogenous cells. Their conidia are oblong, initially hyaline and aseptate that become pigmented brown, 1-septate and slightly constricted at the septum. However, the width of conidiomata (x̄ = 110 μm) and length/width (L/W) ratio of conidia of our new collection (L/W = 1.9) are comparatively smaller than the ex-type strain (x̄ = 295 μm and L/W = 2.2 ± 0.02) (Luque et al. 2005). Based on phylogenetic analyses, our collection clustered with other strains of D. viticola (IRNBS28, WA10NO01 and WA10NO02) with relatively high 93% ML bootstrap and 0.93 PP support (Fig. 1). Based on the morpho-molecular evidence, we identified our collection as a new host record of D. viticola on Morus sp. in Italy.