Sarocladium solani H.Z. Du & Jian K. Liu, in Cao et al., Fungal Diversity 132: 495 (2025)

Index Fungorum number: IF 854032; MycoBank number: MB 854032; Facesoffungi number: FoF 15873; Figs. 1, 2

Etymology – The epithet ‘solani’ refers to the host genus Solanum on which the holotype was collected.

Holotype – HKAS 132482.

Saprobic on dead fruits of Solanum melongena (Solanaceae), Sexual morph: Undetermined. Asexual morph: Conidiomata sporodochial, superficial, solitary to gregarious, scattered, sporodochia globose, thin- and smooth-walled, shiny, glistening, hyaline to subhyaline. Mycelium partly immersed, partly superficial on host surface, and hyaline to subhyaline, unseptate, branched, up to 1–2 µm wide in culture, sometimes bound together into ropes, could produce hyphal coil and net form structure. Conidiophores 16–29 µm (x̄ = 23 µm, n = 20) long, 1–2 µm (x̄ = 1.5 µm, n = 20) wide, cylindrical, micronematous, solitary, erect, hyaline to subhyaline, short, smooth-walled, unbranched, aseptate, straight or slightly curved. Conidiogenous cells indistinct, short, hyaline, smooth-walled. Conidia 4–7 µm (x̄ = 5 µm, n = 30) long, 1.5–2.5 µm (x̄ = 2 µm, n = 30) wide, unicellular, narrower cylindrical, clavate, with round ends, aseptate, hyaline to subhyaline, thin- and smooth-walled.

Culture characteristics – Conidia germinated on PDA within 24 h, and germ tubes produced from basal cell. Colonies growing on PDA reached 15–18 mm in diameter after three weeks at 25 °C. Colonies circular, margin entire, dense, surface smooth, white in the whole colony from above and reverse, no pigmentation on PDA.

Material examined – CHINA, Guizhou Province, Guiyang City, Nanming District, Guiyang Medicinal Botanical Garden, 106°41’48”E 26°32’18”N, elevation 1127 m, 20 January 2021, H.Z. Du, cultivated samples, on dead fruits of medicinal plant Solanum melongena L. (Solanaceae). S69 (HKAS 132482, holotype), ex-type living culture CGMCC 3.27460; ibid., on dead stems of Solanum melongena, S69-1 (HUEST 23.0489, paratype), living culture UESTCC 23.0488.

GenBank – HKAS 132482: PP811630 (ITS), PP816294 (rpb2); UESTCC 23.0488: PP811631 (ITS), PP816295 (rpb2).

Notes – Sarocladium solani has close phylogenetic relationship with S. liquanense based on ITS and rpb2 sequence data, and formed a distinct lineage in Sarocladium (Fig. 2). The nucleotide base pair comparison between S. solani (ex-type, CGMCC 3.27460) and S. liquanense (ex-type, ACC 39306) revealed 40/518 bp (7.7%) of ITS differences. Morphologically, S. solani resembles S. liquanense in having cylindrical, solitary, erect conidiophores and unicellular, ellipsoidal to cylindrical conidia (Hou et al. 2019), but S. liquanense differs from S. solani in having branched and septate Conidiophores. Therefore, based on morphological comparison and phylogenetic analyses, S. solani associated with medicinal plant Solani melongena (Solanaceae) is introduced as a new species in China.

Figure 1 – Sarocladium solani (HKAS 132482, holotype). a Solanumium melongena. b–d Colony on host surface. e–h Conidiophores with conidia. i Conidiophores. j–n, p–s Conidia. o Germinated conidium. t–u Colony on PDA (t from above, u from below). Scale bars: e–i, o = 10 µm, j–n, p–s = 5 µm.

Figure 2 – Phylogenetic tree from Maximum Likelihood analysis based on the combined ITS and rpb2 sequences data. Branches support for ML = 75% and Bayesian inference posterior probabilities (BIPP) = 0.95 are marked above or below branches as MLBS/BIPP. Thickened branches indicate branch support with MLBS = 100% and BIPP = 1.00. The tree was rooted with Kiflimonium curvulum (CBS 430.66, ex-type) and K. junci (CBS 148279, ex-type). The abbreviation T indicate the ex-type strain. Names in red are newly collected taxa.