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First Report of Leaf Spot on Japanese Plum Caused by an Alternaria sp. in Korea

Japanese plum (Prunus salicina Lindley) is a deciduous tree in the family Rosaceae. In Korea, this plant is widely distributed in orchards as an important stone fruit as well as in gardens as an ornamental tree because of their abundant white blossoms. Every September to November since 2001, leaf spots were observed on Japanese plum in a garden in Cheongyang, Chungnam District, Korea. Early symptoms consisted of small, brown spots that were 2 to 5 mm in diameter. Later, the leaf lesions became circular or irregular, dark brown, expanded to 15 mm in diameter, and resulted in discoloration with necrosis on twisted leaves that was followed by defoliation. In November, older lesions sometimes appeared blackish brown as sporulation occurred on the lesions. The causal fungus was isolated from diseased leaves and cultured on potato dextrose agar. A culture has been placed in the CABI Herbarium (IMI Accession No. 387139). Conidial dimension averaged 34 × 12 μm. On the basis of morphological characteristics of conidia and conidiophores, the causal fungus was identified as a small-spored species of Alternaria as described by E. G. Simmons (1). Pathogenicity tests were conducted by inoculating slightly wounded and nonwounded leaves with a conidial suspension adjusted to 1 × 10⁶ conidia/ml. Four leaves per each experiment were either wounded or not and inoculated with a spore suspension. The eight leaves were placed in a moist chamber at 25°C. After 6 to 10 days, small brown spots appeared on 87% of the wounded and nonwounded leaves. Control leaves sprayed with distilled water did not develop any symptoms. The causal fungus was consistently reisolated from the leaf spots. Results from pathogenicity tests were similar in a repeated test. It is possible that small-spored Alternaria spp. isolates are host specific (2). Eight Alternaria spp., including A. alternata, A. tenuis, A. tenuissima, and A. citri, have been found to cause black spot on fifteen Prunus spp. in China, Japan, Hong Kong, Libya, Mexico, Australia, and the United States (2). Further studies on the host-specific toxin production, geographical distribution, and host ranges for the species of Alternaria isolated from Japanese plum are in progress. To our knowledge, this is the first report of leaf spot on Japanese plum (P. salicina) caused by a small-spored Alternaria sp. in Korea.

References: (1) E. G. Simmons. Mycotaxon 55:79, 1995. (2) K. Inoue and H. Nasu. J. Gen. Plant Pathol. 66:18, 2002.