title: Botrytis pseudocinerea Is a Significant Pathogen of Several Crop Plants but Susceptible to Displacement by Fungicide-Resistant B. cinerea Strains.
abstract: Botrytis cinerea is one of the most important pathogens worldwide, causing gray mold on a large variety of crops. Botrytis pseudocinerea has been found previously to occur together with B. cinerea in low abundance in vineyards and strawberry fields. Here, we report B. pseudocinerea to be common and sometimes dominant over B. cinerea on several fruit and vegetable crops in Germany. On apples with calyx end rot and on oilseed rape, it was the major gray mold species. Abundance of B. pseudocinerea was often negatively correlated with fungicide treatments. On cultivated strawberries, it was frequently found in spring but was largely displaced by B. cinerea following fungicide applications. Whereas B. cinerea strains with multiple-fungicide resistance were common in these fields, B. pseudocinerea almost never developed resistance to any fungicide even though resistance mutations occurred at similar frequencies in both species under laboratory conditions. The absence of resistance to quinone outside inhibitors in B. pseudocinerea was correlated with an intron in cytB preventing the major G143A resistance mutation. Our work indicates that B. pseudocinerea has a wide host range similar to that of B. cinerea and that it can become an important gray mold pathogen on cultivated plants.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, University of Kaiserslautern, Kaiserslautern, Germany.
authors.forename: Cecilia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Plesken
authors.affiliation: Esteburg Fruit Research and Advisory Centre, Jork, Germany Department of Food Science, Aarhus University, Årslev, Denmark.
authors.forename: Roland W S
authors.initials: RW
authors.lastname: Weber
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, University of Kaiserslautern, Kaiserslautern, Germany.
authors.forename: Sabrina
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rupp
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, University of Kaiserslautern, Kaiserslautern, Germany.
authors.forename: Michaela
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Leroch
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, University of Kaiserslautern, Kaiserslautern, Germany hahn@biologie.uni-kl.de.
authors.forename: Matthias
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hahn
mesh_terms: D020171:Botrytis / Q000187:drug effects / Q000254:growth & development / Q000302:isolation & purification* / Q000502:physiology*; D018556:Crops, Agricultural / Q000382:microbiology*; D004271:DNA, Fungal / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics; D025141:Drug Resistance, Fungal; D005638:Fruit / Q000382:microbiology; D005659:Fungicides, Industrial / Q000494:pharmacology*; D005858:Germany; D058507:Host Specificity; D056265:Microbial Interactions; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010935:Plant Diseases / Q000382:microbiology*; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D014675:Vegetables / Q000382:microbiology
chemical_list: D004271:DNA, Fungal; D005659:Fungicides, Industrial