Paprika Damping-off Outbreak Caused by Fusarium oxysporum Contaminated Seeds in Cheorwon Province in 2023

Abstract

In 2023, symptoms like damping-off disease were observed in 74 paprika growing in greenhouses in Cheorwon-gun, Gangwon-do, Korea. In this study, we tried to find the cause of the damping-off disease outbreak. We collected symptomatic seedlings and observed the typical crescent-shaped conidia of Fusarium oxysporum by microscope. To confirm the presence of F. oxysporum in the samples, polymerase chain reaction was performed using primers specific for F. oxysporum; the resulting sequence showed 99.11% identity with F. oxysporum. To confirm the pathogenicity of the F. oxysporum (CW) isolated from the samples, healthy paprika plants were inoculated with F. oxysporum CW and damping-off symptoms were observed 2 weeks later. To investigate whether the damping-off disease outbreak in Cheorwon-gun was caused by F. oxysporum-contaminated seeds, 100 paprika seeds were disinfected and placed in Murashige and Skoog medium. Typical pink F. oxysporum hyphae were found only in control non-disinfected seeds. An 18S rRNA-based and a TEF gene-based phylogenetic analysis showed that the F. oxysporum CW isolate was not grouped with a F. oxysporum isolate reported from Cheorwon-gun in 2019. This study is the first report that an outbreak of damping-off disease in paprika in Cheorwon-gun, Gangwon-do, Korea, was caused by contamination of F. oxysporum seeds.

Keywords

• damping-off disease
• fusarium oxysporum
• outbreak
• paprika
• seed contamination