Culture morphological characteristics of the pathogen Diaporthe vaccinii in regulated products – cranberry plants

Abstract

In the course of the work of the Mycology Laboratory of FGBU “VNIIKR”, while studying the regulated products of cranberry seedlings samples from the Republic of Belarus, the fungus Diaporthe vaccinii Shear was detected and studied, which is a causative agent of blight of blueberry. The study describes the biological characteristics of the pathogen, the main damage symptoms on the Vaccinium genus berry crops and, in particular, on cranberry plants, methods of isolating and identifying the pathogen using culture morphological and molecular genetic methods; presents a comparative characteristic of the growth and development of the fungus on two nutrient media: potato dextrose and malt agar; the culture morphological characteristics of the fungus are described, as well as the morphometry of the structures – pycnidia and pycnospores. The identification of the pathogen was carried out on the basis of preliminary symptomatic and morphological characteristics. To confirm the species, the analysis of nucleotide sequences was carried out for the site of the internal transcribed spacer.