Identification Of Pestalotiopsis Spp.from Southern China And Study On The Species-recognizing Characters

More than 800 specimens of plant diseases were collected in Zhejiang, Guangxi and Yunnan province from June, 2000 to October, 2001. And150 isolates of Pestalotiopsis and its allied genera were identified from those plants of 49 families. They were Bartalinia robillardoides Tassi, Monochaetia camelliae (Desm.) Allescher, four species of Seiridium and fifty-five species of Pestalotiopsis according to the criteria of Steyaert (1949) , Button (1980) and Nag Raj (1993)'s. Nine species, formerly included in Pestalotia, were recombined to Pestalotiopsis, and they were Pestalotiopsis aloes (Trinch.) J.X.Zhang et T.Xu comb, nov., Pestalotiopsis clusiae (Griffon & Maubl.) J.X.Zhang et T.Xu comb, nov., Pestalotiopsis elasticola (P.Henn.) J.X.Zhang et T.Xu comb, nov., Pestalotiopsis eusora (Sacc.) J.X.Zhang et T.Xu comb, nov., Pestalotiopsis laughtonae (Doidge) J.X.Zhang et T.Xu comb, nov., Pestalotiopsis macrochaeta (Speg.) J.X.Zhang et T.Xu comb, nov., Pestalotiopsis mangifolia (Guba ) J.X.Zhang etT.Xu comb, nov., Pestalotiopsis scirpina (Ell. & G. Martin) J.X.Zhang et T.Xu comb, nov., Pestalotiopsis vismiae (Petr.) J.X.Zhang et T.Xu comb. nov. respectively . Eleven species of Pestalotiopsis were new records in China. In addition, there were thirty-nine kinds of new host records in those above isolates.The cultural characters of 11 species of Pestalotiopsis and its allied genera on PDA were observed, which indicate that there were some varieties among the species of Pestalotiopsis and its allied genera on the morphology and colour of colony, the colour and ring bands of the back of colony, and the time and type of fluctification. That could be regarded as an assistant foundation in Pestalotiopsis. The acervuli of 11 species of Pestalotiopsis were studied in semi-ultrathin section and the results proved that the morphology and size of the acevuli had some difference between species, and some of them are pycnidia similarly. So the acervuli had some significance in the identification of Pestalotiopsis spp. Observation on the conidia of 6 isolates belonging to four genera by SEM indicated that there were remarkable difference between the genera. It was confirmed that the numbers of appendages and cells of conidia were steady characters for identification in the genera and species level. And the appendage knobbed on the top was also a very important character for the species identification. Whether the conidia has a single appendage branched later was another key character in this genus. The species of Pestalotiopsis can be divided into two groups by each of the above two characters.The results of the presented work enriched the resource of Pestalotiopsis and allied gnera in China and provided the fundamental information for the systematic taxonomy in the future.