Diaporthe foeniculina (Sacc.) Udayanga & Castl., in Udayanga et al., Persoonia 32: 95 (2014).

Index Fungorum number: IF 803929; MycoBank number: MB 803929; Facesoffungi number: FoF 02183; Fig. 1

Saprobic on dead aerial branch of Ficus carica. Sexual morph: See Udayanga et al. (2014). Asexual morph: coelomycetous. Conidiomata observed as small black dots on the host, semi-immersed to immersed, pycnidial, pyriform, scattered, ostiolate, 150–300 µm diam. Conidiomata wall consisting of 3–4 layers of pale brown, thickwalled cells of textura angularis. Conidiophores hyaline, smooth, unbranched. Alpha conidia hyaline, smooth-walled, bi- to multi-guttulate, ovate to ellipsoidal, base sub-truncate, 5–7.5×1.5–3 µm (n=20). Beta conidia aseptate, hyaline, smooth, apex and base bluntly rounded, slightly curved, 15–25×0.5–2 µm (n=10).

Culture characteristics – Colonies on PDA entirely white both on surface and reverse. Aerial mycelium cottony, colonies reaching 60 mm diam. after 7 days in room temperature.

Material examined – Italy, Province of Forlì-Cesena [FC], near Pianetto—Galeata, on dead and aerial branch of Ficus carica L. (Moraceae), 21 December 2018, E. Camporesi, IT 4192 (JZBH 320201), living culture JZB 320201.

Hosts – Wide host range, including Achillea, Ailanthus, Amorpha, Angelica, Arctium, Asparagus, Camellia, Castanea, Chenopodium, Citrus, Cupressus, Diospyros, Eucalyptus, Ficus carica Hemerocallis, Lunaria, Melilotus, Microcitrus, Persea, Platanus, Prunus, Rosa, Rubus, Vicia and Wisteria (Farr and Rossman 2022; this study).

Distribution– Wide geographical range, including in Chile, Greece, Iran, Italy, Malta, New Zealand, Portugal, Serbia, South Africa, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, Uruguay, US (Farr and Rossman 2022; this study).

GenBank numbers – OP002068 (ITS), OP837431 (his), OP837429 (tub2)

Notes – Diaporthe foeniculina (JZB 320201) was recovered from a dead aerial branch of Ficus carica in Italy. Our strain shared similar morphology with the type strain of D. foeniculina (CBS 111553) which was introduced by Udayanga et al. (2014), with minor dimensional differences. Conidiomata of our strain (JZB 320201) are comparatively smaller than those of D. foeniculina (CBS 111553) (150–300 μm diam. vs 400– 700 µm diam.). Further we have observed smaller alpha conidia in our strain than CBS 111553 (5–7.5×1.5–3 µm vs 8.8±0.3×2.4±0.1 μm) (Udayanga et al. 2014). These morphological differences probably due to environmental factors and host variations. Phylogenetic analyses using combined ITS, cal, his, tef1, tub2 sequence data confirmed that our strain is D. foeniculina and it is clade with the strain MFLUCC 20-0151 with high statistical support (92/1.00) (Fig. 2). Comparisons of base pair differences for ITS, tub2 and his genes between our strain (JZB 320201) and the ex-epitype strain of D. foeniculina (CBS 111553) reveal less than 1% base pair differences in ITS and tub2 gene regions (ITS=0.57%, tub2 = 0.97%). However, we observe 5.77% base pair difference in HIS gene (94.23% similarity). We were unable to obtain cal and tef1 sequence data for our strain, and we could not compare the base pair difference for them. Thus, based on the multi-gene phylogeny and morphology; this study presents the first report of D. foeniculina from a Ficus carica from Italy.

Figure 1 – Diaporthe foeniculina (JZB320201, new host record) a. Appearance of conidiomata on the host. b. Section through the conidiomata. c. Mature conidia attached to the conidiophore and the conidioma cell wall. d. Alpha and beta conidia. e. Mature conidia. Scale bars: b, c=20 µm, d, e=5 µm

Figure 2 – Phylogram generated from maximum likelihood analysis based on ITS, cal, his, tef1 and tub2 sequenced data of given Diaporthe species. Related sequences were obtained from GenBank, and 223 strains are included in the sequence analyses, with 2674 columns, 1972 distinct patterns 1439 parsimony-informative, 340 singleton sites, 894 constant sites. Diaporthella corylina (CBS121124) is used as the outgroup taxon. Bootstrap support values for ML ≥65%, BYPP ≥0.90 are given near the nodes. Type strains are in bold. Newly generated strains are in red bold

Figure 2 – (continued)