During a survey of diseases on kiwifruit (Actinidia chinensis) cv. Hayward during spring 1998 in Northern Greece, leaves of kiwifruit trees were found covered with small, necrotic brown spots. Intense spotting was associated with defoliation. Furthermore, small, sunken, dark brown cankers appeared a few centimeters below the twig tip, and twigs died distal to the canker a few days later, while the twig remained healthy below the canker, often producing a new shoot below the canker. Isolations from symptomatic leaves and internal tissues of twigs on potato dextrose agar (PDA), after surface-sterilization with 0.5% NaOCl and 90% alcohol, respectively, consistently yielded a fungus that, based on conidial morphological characteristics, was identified as Alternaria alternata (Nees:Fr.) Keissl. (2). Pathogenicity tests were performed on 3-year-old kiwi plants. Tests on twigs were conducted by inoculating 35 twigs with 5-mm disks from 7-day-old cultures on PDA at 25°C. Each twig was inoculated with three disks. Tests on leaves were conducted by spraying a conidial suspension (5 × 106 conidia per ml) of the cultures on leaves. Plants were kept in a glasshouse at 22 to 25°C. Symptoms, identical to those observed in the field, developed on leaves and twigs 6 and 18 days, respectively, after inoculation. All inoculated leaves exhibited symptoms of the disease, whereas more than 95% of inoculated twigs exhibited disease symptoms. A. alternata was consistently reisolated from inoculated tissues. A. alternata is widely known to be a leaf spot pathogen of kiwifruit (1). This is the first report of A. alternata causing twig dieback.
References: (1) L. Corazza and L. Luongo. Plant Dis. 83:487, 1999. (2) E. G. Simmons. Mycotaxon 37:79, 1990.
