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The diversity of microfungi associated with grasses in the Sporobolus indicus complex in Queensland, Australia

There are five closely related Sporobolus species, collectively known as weedy Sporobolus grasses (WSG) or the rat’s tail grasses. They are fast growing, highly competitive, unpalatable weeds of pastures, roadsides and woodlands. An effective biological control agent would be a welcomed alternative...

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Autores principales: Steinrucken, Tracey V., Vitelli, Joseph S., Holdom, David G., Tan, Yu Pei
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10512349/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37746236
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/ffunb.2022.956837
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author Steinrucken, Tracey V.
Vitelli, Joseph S.
Holdom, David G.
Tan, Yu Pei
author_facet Steinrucken, Tracey V.
Vitelli, Joseph S.
Holdom, David G.
Tan, Yu Pei
author_sort Steinrucken, Tracey V.
collection PubMed
description There are five closely related Sporobolus species, collectively known as weedy Sporobolus grasses (WSG) or the rat’s tail grasses. They are fast growing, highly competitive, unpalatable weeds of pastures, roadsides and woodlands. An effective biological control agent would be a welcomed alternative to successive herbicide application and manual removal methods. This study describes the initial exploratory phase of isolating and identifying native Australian microfungi associated with WSG, prior to evaluating their efficacy as inundative biological control agents. Accurate species-level identification of plant-pathogenic microfungi associated with WSG is an essential first step in the evaluation and prioritisation of pathogenicity bioassays. Starting with more than 79 unique fungal morphotypes isolated from diseased Sporobolus grasses in Queensland, Australia, we employed multi-locus phylogenetic analyses to classify these isolates into 54 fungal taxa. These taxa belong to 22 Ascomycete families (12 orders), of which the majority fall within the Pleosporales (>24 taxa in 7 families). In the next phase of the study, the putative species identities of these taxa will allow us to prioritise those which are likely to be pathogenic based on existing literature and their known ecological roles. This study represents the first step in a systematic, high-throughput approach to finding potential plant pathogenic biological control agents.
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spelling pubmed-105123492023-09-22 The diversity of microfungi associated with grasses in the Sporobolus indicus complex in Queensland, Australia Steinrucken, Tracey V. Vitelli, Joseph S. Holdom, David G. Tan, Yu Pei Front Fungal Biol Fungal Biology There are five closely related Sporobolus species, collectively known as weedy Sporobolus grasses (WSG) or the rat’s tail grasses. They are fast growing, highly competitive, unpalatable weeds of pastures, roadsides and woodlands. An effective biological control agent would be a welcomed alternative to successive herbicide application and manual removal methods. This study describes the initial exploratory phase of isolating and identifying native Australian microfungi associated with WSG, prior to evaluating their efficacy as inundative biological control agents. Accurate species-level identification of plant-pathogenic microfungi associated with WSG is an essential first step in the evaluation and prioritisation of pathogenicity bioassays. Starting with more than 79 unique fungal morphotypes isolated from diseased Sporobolus grasses in Queensland, Australia, we employed multi-locus phylogenetic analyses to classify these isolates into 54 fungal taxa. These taxa belong to 22 Ascomycete families (12 orders), of which the majority fall within the Pleosporales (>24 taxa in 7 families). In the next phase of the study, the putative species identities of these taxa will allow us to prioritise those which are likely to be pathogenic based on existing literature and their known ecological roles. This study represents the first step in a systematic, high-throughput approach to finding potential plant pathogenic biological control agents. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-08-19 /pmc/articles/PMC10512349/ /pubmed/37746236 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/ffunb.2022.956837 Text en Copyright © 2022 Steinrucken, Vitelli, Holdom and Tan https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Fungal Biology
Steinrucken, Tracey V.
Vitelli, Joseph S.
Holdom, David G.
Tan, Yu Pei
The diversity of microfungi associated with grasses in the Sporobolus indicus complex in Queensland, Australia
title The diversity of microfungi associated with grasses in the Sporobolus indicus complex in Queensland, Australia
title_full The diversity of microfungi associated with grasses in the Sporobolus indicus complex in Queensland, Australia
title_fullStr The diversity of microfungi associated with grasses in the Sporobolus indicus complex in Queensland, Australia
title_full_unstemmed The diversity of microfungi associated with grasses in the Sporobolus indicus complex in Queensland, Australia
title_short The diversity of microfungi associated with grasses in the Sporobolus indicus complex in Queensland, Australia
title_sort diversity of microfungi associated with grasses in the sporobolus indicus complex in queensland, australia
topic Fungal Biology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10512349/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37746236
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/ffunb.2022.956837
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