Archivio Journal of Plant Pathology

Abstract:

Fusarium langsethiae is an European species, while Fusarium sibiricum is mainly distributed in northern Asia. Morphological characters alone do not allow a clear separation of F. langsethiae from F. sibiricum. The long TG repeat in the ribosomal IGS region is the only DNA sequence that has been used to design the species-specific primer pair CNL 12/PulvIGSr for the identification of F . sibiricum isolates. Another way to identify F . sibiricum is to use a combination of F. sporotrichioides- and F. langsethiae-specific primer pairs. The aim of this study was to find new ways for identifying and discriminating F. langsethiae from F. sibiricum. The paper also reports the first record of F. sibiricum from Iran, outside northern Asia and Norway, and the first isolation of F. langsethiae, an European pathogen, from western Siberia. Thus, the distribution of F. sibiricum and F. langsethiae may be much larger in Eurasia than what is currently known.