Isolation, identification and characterization of Cytospora chrysosperma associated with canker disease of Salix alba L.
Sabina Rana, Sunita Chandel, Sanjeev Thakur
Abstract
A serious canker disease associated with Salix alba L. tree in the cold desert of Kinnaur district of Himachal Pradesh, India was thoroughly explored for molecular and morphological identification and characterization. The samples were collected from canker infected trees of S. alba, which showed typical symptoms of the disease on the branches and twigs. Isolation of the pathogen was done on potato dextrose agar (PDA) medium as per the standard isolation technique and designated initially on the basis of morphology and cultural characteristics. Further, the sequence data obtained from the amplified ITS-rDNA region and its retrieval and comparison with the data available in GenBank confirmed initially the strain as Cytospora chrysosperma. In vivo and in vitro pathogenicity test of isolate (C. chrysosperma) on shoots of S.alba induced the symptoms of canker disease. These preliminary studies have provided ITS sequence data for the pathogen which has been deposited in GenBank as Valsa sordida isolate SR91 to further improve the understanding of the C. chrysosperma on the other woody host.