The mycobiome of Prunus trees in Germany

During a survey in important fruit production areas in Germany, branches with symptoms of fungal infection were sampled in Prunus orchards, and 1018 fungal isolates were obtained. By a combination of blastn searches and phylogenetic analyses based on ITS/LSU sequences, a diversity of 172 fungal taxa belonging to Ascomycota, Basidiomycota and Mucoromycota were differentiated. The majority of the strains belonged to three classes of Ascomycota, namely Sordariomycetes, Leotiomycetes and Dothideomycetes.
(Bien et al. 2020. Novel collophorina-like genera) Strains with a yeast-like appearance in the Leotiomycetes were analyses based on morphological and multi-locus sequence data (LSU, ITS, EF1-α, GAPDH). Three new Collophorina species, C. badensis, C. germanica, C. neorubra, were revealed from wood of Prunus spp. and further six new species, including Tympanis inflata and five new species in the new genera Capturomyces, Variabilispora and Vexillomyces from spore traps mounted on grapevine shoots in a vineyard in Rhineland-Palatinate. Collophorina paarla and C. euphorbiae were transferred to the newly erected genera Pallidophorina and Ramoconidiophora, respectively.
(Bien & Damm 2020. Arboricolonus simplex gen. et sp. nov. and novelties in Cadophora, Minutiella and Proliferodiscus) Multi-locus phylogenetic analyses (LSU, ITS, TUB, EF-1α, depending on genus) revealed in the Leotiomycetes a new genus, Arboricolonus, three new Cadophora species, C. africana, C. prunicola and C. ramosa, and Proliferodiscus ingens sp. nov. and in the Eurotiomycetes one new Minutiella species.
(Bien & Damm 2020. Prunus trees in Germany – a hideout of unknown fungi?) Of the remaining taxa, only a part could be identified to species level based on ITS/LSU. Because of the high plasticity of species boundaries, the identification certainty was divided in categories based on nucleotide differences to reference sequences. In total 82 and 20 species were identified with high or low (cf.) certainty, respectively. Moreover, about 70 species could not be assigned to any species.