Abstract
Phytophthora infestans (Peronosporaceae, Oomycota) is the causal agent of late blight of potato (Solanum tuberosum) and a native to Central America. When introduced to Europe, it rapidly spread in 1845, triggering the Irish Potato Famine, which claimed millions of lives and led to an exodus of Europeans to North America. The spread of the species was recently traced using historical specimens from various herbaria. However, there are critical spatial and temporal gaps in the documentation of the early spread of the species. Within the framework of a digitalization and restoration project of the mid-nineteenth century fungus collections of the herbarium of the State Museum of Natural History Karlsruhe, several specimens of Phytophthora infestans from North-East Germany collected in 1853, 1855 and 1856 were discovered. In addition, we revised already deposited material and identified a specimen of Ph. infestans that was collected no later than 1852. These specimens are among the oldest from Central Europe and are now available to the scientific public. Further, we searched for thus far overlooked specimens, using online catalogues. We found specimens from 23 European countries, with the oldest material from western Europe and almost no data from eastern Europe, south-eastern Europe and southern Europe. Our results emphasize the need for archiving and digitizing natural history collections in order to document the historical spread of agricultural and forest pathogens and to better understand current-day epidemic spreads.
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Acknowledgements
The Project “Preparation und restoring historical fungus collections of the former Herbarium of the University of Greifswald” was funded by Kulturstiftung der Länder, Berlin, Germany. We thank Lee Davies (Royal Botanic Gardens Kew Mycological Herbarium, Great Britain) for providing valuable information on the material deposited in the Kew Mycology Collection and Anthony Hasslberger for technical support. MT is supported by the LOEWE initiative of the government of Hesse in the framework of the Centre for Translational Biodiversity Genomics (TBG).
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MS made the concept, carried out the herbarium studies and wrote a first draft of the manuscript. MS and MW carried out the microscopic studies. MW and MT delivered major contributions to the manuscript. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
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Wieners, M., Thines, M. & Scholler, M. Hidden treasures—historical specimens from the late blight pandemic discovered in the Herbarium of the State Museum of Natural History Karlsruhe. J Plant Dis Prot (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41348-024-00907-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41348-024-00907-z