Fusarium tricinctum associated with Head Blight on wheat in Argentina

CASTAÑARES E.; STENGLEIN S.A; DINOLFO M.I.; MORENO M.V.

PLANT DISEASE

AMER PHYTOPATHOLOGICAL SOC

Año: 2011 vol. 95 p. 496 - 496

0191-2917

In December 2009, a study of the health status of wheat seeds from Azul, Buenos Aires, Argentina was conducted and F. tricinctum was isolated and confirmed by morphological data. To confirm the morphological diagnosis, the genomic DNA of the isolate was extracted, a PCR reaction with specific primers 5´-CGTGTCCCTCTGTACAGCTTTGA-3´-forward and 5´-GTGGTTACCTCCCGATACTCT-3´- reverse was chosen, and a product of the expected size (215 bp) was obtained, confirming the identification. The size of the DNA fragment was estimated using a 100 bp DNA ladder by gel electrophoresis. The reaction was repeated three times. Furthermore, an amplification of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region of rDNA with primer pair ITS3/ITS4 was chosen. BLAST searches of the sequence (GenBank Accession No. HM635739) showed 100% similarity with several sequences of the GenBank (e.g., Accession Nos. HM068317, FN598932, EF589873) of F. tricinctum. To our knowledge, this is the first report of F. tricinctum on wheat in Argentina. This species is known to produce fusarin C, enniatins and moniliformin toxins. As F. tricinctum can infect different cereal grains, a large-scale survey in the same and different fields is in progress.