Aggressiveness of Fusarium species obtained from different head parts of wheat under in vitro conditions

Abstract

It has been proven that certain fungi involved in Fusarium head blight (FHB) disease, a global significant threat to crop production and food safety, display a preferential specialization towards wheat organs/tissues. So far, there is no published work on the variation in aggressiveness of Fusarium species causing FHB obtained from different wheat head parts. In vitro-environment aggressiveness tests were conducted on single-spores cultures obtained from both kernels and glumes in the heads of six quantitatively different bread and durum wheat cultivars artificially infected with four Fusarium species causing FHB under field conditions over two consecutive seasons. There was a different aggressiveness among Fusarium species obtained from both kernels and glumes, indicating a distinct difference in the head parts range irrespective of botanical origin in host plants. Isolates of F. culmorum and F. verticillioides obtained from infected kernels had shorter latent periods and higher area under disease progress curves compared to isolates obtained from glumes, and the reverse was observed for the F. equiseti isolate. In the case of F. solani isolates obtained from kernels or from glumes were equally aggressive, however. Primarily data obtained in this in-depth work have implications for screening disease reaction of wheat to FHB infection because the aggressiveness of Fusarium species of interest varies in relation to their isolation from infected head parts.