Paramyrothecium amorphophalli sp. nov., a causal agent of leaf blight on elephant foot yam in northern Thailand
A Armand, D Bundhun, Chitrabhanu S. Bhunjun, W Punyaboon, Ruvishika S. Jayawardena
Abstract
Paramyrothecium was introduced in 2016 containing 20 species and many species have been reported as plant pathogens, causing leaf blight and leaf spots on different plant species.This study revealed a new species Paramyrothecium amorphophalli from symptomatic leaves of elephant foot yam (Amorphophallus sp.), collected from Chiang Rai, Thailand based on distinct morphological characteristics and phylogenetic analyses.The isolate formed a distinct lineage from Paramyrothecium eichhorniae and P. vignicola based on maximum likelihood, maximum parsimony and Bayesian posterior probability analyses of ITS, cmdA, rpb2 and tub2 sequence data.Furthermore, pathogenicity assays confirmed that P. amorphophalli is pathogenic to the original host, causing leaf blight.