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Eucalypt diseases and their management in China

Keynote paper APPS 2011

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Abstract

Eucalypts were first introduced into China in 1890 and the first commercial eucalypt plantation was established in ZhanJiang, GuangDong province in 1954. Because natural ecosystems have been strictly protected from logging since 2000, eucalypt plantations in South China have been substantially expanded to meet the needs of a rapidly growing local economy. Approximately 3.6 million ha of eucalypt plantations have now been established and half of these represent clones of Eucalyptus urophylla x E. grandis, and E. camaldulensis x E. grandis hybrids. However, the sustainable development of the eucalypt plantations is under increasing threat due to pathogens and pests. The fact that there has been very limited work on eucalypt pathology in China compounds this fact. During the course of past five years, a programme known as the CFEPP (http://www.fabinet.up.ac.za/cfepp/index) focusing on eucalypt health problems in China has been developed, and a large number of eucalypt disease surveys have been conducted in areas such as GuangXi, GuangDong, HaiNan, FuJian and Yunnan. This work has resulted in the collection of over 2000 fungal strains many of which are well-known eucalypt pathogens. A total of 30 fungal species (eight of them new to science) residing in 11genera such as Calonectria, Celoporthe, Chrysorporthe, Quambalaria and Teratosphaeria, have been characterized based on comparisons of morphology and DNA sequence data. Both glass-house and field trials have been conducted to test the pathogenicity of the most important of these fungi on commercially used eucalypt clones. Results have shown that there are significant differences in the susceptibility of these clones to fungal isolates/species, indicating that selection of resistant material for commercial planting in the future can be achieved.

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Acknowledgements

The first author thanks Prof. Caroline Mohammed and the Australasian Plant Pathology Society for the invitation to present this work as a plenary lecture at the biennial meeting of the society. In preparing this presentation and the associated manuscript, we received valuable assistance, pre-publication reviews and graphic-images from a number of colleagues and students including Prof. Jolanda Roux, Prof. YaoJian Xie, Dr. ShuaiFei Chen, Mr. RunLei Chang and Mr. XinTao Mou. We are also grateful to Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2007DFA31190), Natural Science Foundation of China (30771732), Natural Science Foundation of GuangDong (2008B050100014), National Research Foundation of South Africa, and members of Tree Protection Co-operative Programme (TPCP) for funding the studies that served as the foundation for this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. China Eucalypt Research Centre (CERC), Chinese Academy of Forestry (CAF), Beijing, China

    XuDong Zhou

  2. Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute (FABI), University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa

    Michael J. Wingfield

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  1. XuDong Zhou
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  2. Michael J. Wingfield
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Correspondence to XuDong Zhou.

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Zhou, X., Wingfield, M.J. Eucalypt diseases and their management in China. Australasian Plant Pathol. 40, 339–345 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13313-011-0053-y

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