REPORT ON FUNGAL DISEASES OF BAMBOO (PHYLLOSTACHYS EDULIS) IN ITALY

摘要

The bamboos are a subfamily (Bambusoideae) of flowering perennial evergreen plants in the grass family Poaceae, with more than 75 genera and over 1200 species. They are imposing and very vigorous plants, native of tropical and subtropical regions, mostly in the Far East (especially China and Japan, although wild species are found in Africa, Oceania and America). Given the numerous uses of bamboo (paper, yarn, biomass, production of parquet or furniture, green building), recently some attempts have been made to grow bamboo on a commercial basis in Italy, since it is well adapted to the climate of the peninsula and can reach 15 to 20 meters high with a diameter of 15 cm, enduring temperatures up to 25 °C below zero. During the last two years, many plants, in a young bamboos implantation in Apulia region (BAT province, southern Italy), showed different syndromes possibly due to fungal infection. Main symptoms consisted in blighted apical clums erected upwardly, brown necrotic areas spread on the whole clum sheath, leaf yellowing, dwarfism, plant death.Symptomatic plants yielded fungal colonies on different media. Particularly, plants with wilt symptoms (up to 70% of symptomatic plants) were collected and two Fusarium species (denominated A and B), consistently isolated on acidified potato dextrose agar (PDA) medium, were correlated to the syndrome. The ITS-5.8S sequences of isolates A and B showed >99% identity to each other and 100% identity to the corresponding sequences of several isolates of Fusarium oxysporum and Fusarium equiseti, respectively,deposited in GenBank.Present report shows, for the first time, infections by F. equiseti and F. oxysporum on Bamboo in Italy, supported by particularly virulent isolates.Particular attention must be given to plant propagation material, also in consideration that mother plants originate from Asian countries, so there is the risk of importing new pathogens in Italy.