In the winter of 2007 in Piedmont (northern Italy), symptoms of a previously unknown disease were observed on beet (Beta vulgaris L. subsp. vulgaris) (garden beet group) grown under a tunnel on several commercial farms near Cuneo. First symptoms appeared on 1-month-old plants, occurring as brown, round-to-oval spots as much as 2 cm in diameter with dark concentric rings near the perimeter. Small, dark pycnidia were present throughout the spots in concentric rings. Generally, older, lower leaves were affected more than the younger ones. Ten to fifteen percent of the plants were affected. Symptoms on the roots began near the crown as small, dark, sunken spots that became soft and water soaked. Eventually, spots on the roots turned dark brown to black and black lines separated diseased and healthy tissues. Older infected tissues were black, dry, shrunken, and spongy. Pycnidia were not observed on affected roots. From infected leaves and roots, a fungus was consistently isolated on potato dextrose agar (PDA) amended with 25 mg/l of streptomycin. The fungus was grown on PDA and maintained at 22°C (12 h of light, 12 h of dark). After 10 days, black pycnidia (130 to 328 [204] μm in diameter) developed, releasing abundant hyaline, elliptical, nonseptate conidia measuring 3.9 to 6.7 (5.1) × 2.4 to 5.9 (3.6) μm. On the basis of its morphological characteristics, the fungus was identified as a Phoma sp. (1). The internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region was amplified using primers ITS4/ITS6 (2) and sequenced. BLASTn analysis of the 557 bp obtained showed an E-value of 0.0 with Phoma betae. The nucleotide sequence has been assigned GenBank Accession No. EU003450. Pathogenicity tests were performed by spraying leaves of healthy 20-day-old potted B. vulgaris plants with a spore and mycelial suspension (1 × 106 spores or mycelial fragments per ml). Noninoculated plants sprayed only with water served as controls. Fifteen plants (three per pot) were used for each treatment. Plants were covered with plastic bags for 5 days after inoculation and kept in a growth chamber at 20°C. Symptoms previously described developed on leaves of all inoculated plants 5 days after inoculation, while control plants remained healthy. Later, pycnidia and conidia, with the same dimensions and characteristics previously described, were observed on the infected leaves. The fungus was consistently reisolated from the lesions of the inoculated plants. The pathogenicity test was carried out twice. P. betae on B. vulgaris var. cycla has been reported in Canada (3) as well as in other countries. The same pathogen was reported in Italy on sugar beet (2).
References: (1) G. H. Boerema and G. J. Bollen. Persoonia 8:111, 1975. (2) A. Canova. Inf. Fitopatol. 16:207, 1966. (3) D. E L. Cooke and J. M. Duncan. Mycol. Res. 101:667, 1997. (4) J. R. Howard et al. Diseases of Vegetable Crops in Canada. Canadian Phytopathological Society, 1994.
