IMA Fungus 6(1): 249-256, doi: 10.5598/imafungus.2015.06.01.16
Ganoderma species, including new taxa associated with root rot of the iconic Jacaranda mimosifolia in Pretoria, South Africa
expand article infoMartin Coetzee‡, Seonju Marincowitz§, Vuledzani G. Muthelo§, Michael J. Wingfield§
‡ University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa§ University of Pretoria, Department of Genetics, Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute (FABI), Pretoria, South Africa
© Martin Coetzee, Seonju Marincowitz, Vuledzani Muthelo, Michael Wingfield.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-NC 4.0), which permits to copy and distribute the article for non-commercial purposes, provided that the article is not altered or modified and the original author and source are credited.
Citation: Coetzee M, Marincowitz S, Muthelo VG, Wingfield MJ (2015) Ganoderma species, including new taxa associated with root rot of the iconic Jacaranda mimosifolia in Pretoria, South Africa. IMA Fungus 6(1): 249-256. https://doi.org/10.5598/imafungus.2015.06.01.16
Open Access
Abstract
Jacaranda mimosifolia trees have been progressively dying due to Ganoderma root and butt rot disease in Pretoria (the “City of Jacarandas”) for many years. Ganoderma austroafricanum was described from these trees previously but this was based on a single collection. This study treats a substantially expanded collection of isolates of Ganoderma made from all dying trees where basidiomes were present in a Pretoria suburb. DNA sequences were obtained from the ITS and LSU region for the isolates and compared against sequences on GenBank. Phylogenetic analyses were used to compare sequences with those for other Ganoderma species. Based on sequence comparisons and morphological characters, two new Ganoderma species were discovered and these are described here as G. enigmaticum and G. destructans spp. nov. Interestingly, the previously described G. austroafricanum was not found, G. enigmaticum was found on only one Ceratonia siliqua tree and G. destructans was found on all other trees sampled. The latter species appears to be the primary cause of root rot of J. mimosifolia in the area sampled.
Keywords
Basidiomycota, Horticulture, Polyporales, Root rot