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Title: FUSARIUM KYUSHUENSE SP. NOV. FROM KYUSHU AND SHIKOKU, JAPAN

Author
item AOKI, TAKAYAKI - NIAR, JAPAN
item O Donnell, Kerry

Submitted to: Mycoscience
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 1/1/1998
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary: Many serious plant and animal diseases are caused by molds in the fungal genus Fusarium. These molds are also responsible for the production of a wide range of toxins, including suspected cancer-inducing compounds, that frequently contaminate feed and food intended for animal and human consumption. Efforts to investigate the host range of individual Fusarium species, their world-wide distribution, and the types and amounts of poisons produced by these molds has been greatly hampered because microbiological methods that are available for their detection and identification are grossly inadequate. We have addressed this problem by developing molecular and morphological tools that now make it possible to accurately detect and identify a set of highly toxic strains that were originally isolated in Japan where they caused a disease called wheat scab. With these tools, we can now rapidly and accurately identify y the toxin-forming wheat scab fungus for the first time which will allow us to determine its host range, world-wide distribution, and to accurately determine the toxins produced by this mold for the first time. This knowledge is critical for assessing the impact of this pathogenic and toxic mold on food safety as well as for evaluating the potential risk this mold poses to human and animal health.

Technical Abstract: Four trichothecene-producing strains originally isolated from diseased wheat and a vinyl plate in Kyushu and Shikoku, Japan are described and illustrated as a new species, Fusarium kyushuense. This species does not produce chlamydospores, which is the key morphological character which distinguishes it from F. sporotrichioides with which it has been mistaken. F. kyushuense is also differentiated from another morphologically-similar species, F. arthrosporioides, by the absence of sclerotia and by differences in conidiogenesis of obovate conidia. In F. arthrosporioides they are partly holoblastic from the aerial conidiophores and mostly phialidic from the sporodochial conidiophores while in F. kyushuense they are mostly holoblastic and only produced from aerial conidiophores.