Title
The cacao pathogen Moniliophthora roreri (Marasmiaceae) produces rhexolytic thallic conidia and their size is influenced by nuclear condition
Date Issued
01 May 2016
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Aime M.
Purdue University
Publisher(s)
Elsevier B.V.
Abstract
Moniliophthora roreri, the causal agent of frosty pod rot of cacao, is a member of the mushroom-forming family Marasmiaceae (Marasmiineae, Agaricales, Basidiomycota). Yet, M. roreri has never been observed to produce a mushroom fruiting body, but rather produces billions of spores on the surface of infected pods. The question of whether these spores are produced via meiosis or mitosis has been the subject of some speculation. However, numerous molecular-based studies have been unable to support a hypothesis of sexual recombination for this fungus. We re-examined sporogenesis and the nuclear condition of hyphae and spores in M. roreri via nuclear staining and spore germination studies. Conidia are produced asexually in a thallic and rhexolytic manner as is true for other Marasmiineae species such as M. perniciosa, Flammulina velutipes and Marasmius puerariae. We also found that hyphal cells as well as spores harbor one or two nuclei, rarely three, that conidium size is influenced by number of nuclei within, and that individual isolates produced consistently and significantly different proportions of binucleate and mononucleate spores regardless of varietal group.
Start page
208
End page
216
Volume
57
Issue
3
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Ciencias de las plantas, Botánica
Micología
Subjects
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-84959449813
Source
Mycoscience
ISSN of the container
13403540
Sponsor(s)
Acknowledgments: We thank Drs. Wilbert Phillips-Mora (Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center CATIE, Costa Rica), Enrique Arevalo-Gardini (Institute of Tropical Crops, Peru), Francisco Posada (USDA-ARS) and Carmen Suárez (Technical State University of Quevedo, Ecuador) for providing the original isolates that were used in this study. We also thank Dr. Chris Gilpin and Laurie Mueller from the Purdue Life Science Microscopy Facility for facilitating bright-light and fluorescent microscopes. We acknowledge the Purdue University Department of Botany and Plant Pathology for supporting this work.
Sources of information:
Directorio de Producción Científica
Scopus