First Report of Phyllosticta capitalensis Causing Black Spot on Radermachera hainanensis Merr. in China

Radermachera hainanensis Merr. plants are native in south-central and southeast of China. Plants produce large flowers, and are widely cultivated in China as ornamentals. In April 2020, R. hainanensis Merr. plants grown in Cixi Lvpin Garden (30°26'54″N, 121°25'48″E), Zhejiang Province, were found to have many black circular necrotic lesions. In the early infection stage, the lesions appeared in lower leaves as small black circular spots which developed later into large spots (11 to 38 mm diameter) with grey centers and chlorotic edges. Ultimately, the spots spread and merged. Moreover, infected leaves showed premature leaf fall. Disease intensity reached approximately 20% of plants in the affected field (0.5 ha). After effective chemical control, this disease did not spread to other healthy plants in the same garden. To identify the causative pathogen associated with the disease, ten symptomatic leaves were collected from ten different plants. Leaf tissues were cut from the lesion margins and sterilized as follows: surface sterilized with 75% ethanol for 30 seconds and washed three times in sterile distilled water. The leaf tissues were then dipped into 10% sodium hypochlorite for 3-4 minutes, then washed three times in distilled water and dried on a sterile filter paper. After drying, the surface-sterilized leaf discs were cut to small pieces (3×3 mm) and transferred to potato dextrose agar (PDA) plates and incubated at 28°C for 2 to 3 days under 12 h photoperiod. A total of 15 isolates were obtained from the affected leaves, and all the isolates displayed the same colony characteristics. Then, three single-spore isolates were randomly selected (F2, F5 and F8) for further study. The fungal colonies were dark green with a granular surface, and irregular white edges, later turning black. Conidia were one-celled, oval, and narrow at the end with a single apical end, measuring from 7.8 to 11.1 × 4.6 to 5.9 μm (av. 9.5 × 5.2 μm, n=50). These morphological characteristics were consistent with the description of Phyllosticta capitalensis (Wikee et al. 2013; Guarnaccia et al. 2017). The identity of three representative isolates were confirmed by a multilocus approach. The DNA of three isolates were extracted and partial sequences of ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (ITS), actin (ACT), and translation elongation factor 1-alpha (TEF1-α) were amplified and sequenced as previously described (White et al. 1990; O'Donnell et al. 1998; Carbone & Kohn et al. 1999). The three selected isolates shared 100% identical sequence of ITS, ACT and TEF1-α. Then representative isolate F8 was selected for further study. BLAST analysis in GenBank showed that the obtained sequence of ITS (MZ317550) had 99% identity to P. elongata isolate eSX25240811. Other two sequences of ACT (MZ326837) and TEF1-α(MZ326839) showed 99% and 98% identity to P. capitalensis isolate YLWB01, respectively. The phylogenetic trees were constructed by Bootstrap method with 1000 replications using Maximum Likelihood model implemented in the MEGA 7. Results showed that the isolate F8 clustered with P. capitalensis with 100% bootstrap support. Pathogenicity of strain F8 was tested by Koch's postulates. A pathogenicity test was performed in a greenhouse with 80% relative humidity at 28°C. 20 healthy plants were sprayed with a 1×106 conidia ml-1 suspension (three leaves from each individual plants) and another 20 healthy plants were sprayed with sterile distilled water (three leaves from each individual plant) as control. Conidia was obtained from PDA plates after 7 days of incubation in the biochemical incubator at 28°C and concentration was counted in hemacytometer. After 15 days, disease symptoms were observed on all inoculated leaves, whereas the control plants remained asymptomatic. After that, P. capitalensis was re-isolated only from the infected leaves and identified by morphological and sequence analyses. Early identification of P. capitalensis as a causal agent for black spot is crucial to employ effective disease management strategies to control disease in the field. P. capitalensis has been reported on many crops in China (Cheng et al. 2019; Tang et al. 2020; Liao et al. 2020). However, to our knowledge, this is the first report of black spot disease caused by P. capitalensis on Radermachera hainanensis Merr. in China.