Molecular fingerprinting of Botrytis cinerea population structure from different hosts

Abstract

Botrytis cinerea (teleomorph: Botryotinia fuckeliana) causes gray mold disease on vegetable crops in greenhouses. Profound knowledge on pathogen diversity is necessary for efficiently disease management. In this study, forty-two B. cinerea isolates collected from 36 different greenhouses in Antalya province of Turkey were investigated. Twelve SRAP (sequence-related amplified polymorphism) and 18 ISSR (inter simple sequence repeat) primers producing high polymorphic fragments were used to genetic diversity of B. cinerea isolates infecting dill, basil, lettuce, bean, cucumber, tomato, pepper and eggplant. The unweighted pair-group method with arithmetic average analysis (UPGMA) was used to evaluate of combined ISSR and SRAP data showing a similarity range 0.15-0.90 among the isolates. Cophenetic correlation of the tree was high level (r=0.93). Interestingly, cluster analysis showed a divergent group consisting of lettuce isolates which were genetically different from the other isolates. On the other hand, transposable elements (Flipper and Boty) were detected among isolates from all the hosts. Isolates containing only the Fliper element were detected. The results showed that genetically characterized B. cinerea populations by a high level of genetic diversity were associated with genotype flow and the evolutionary potential of B. cinerea. In further studies, the newly tested molecular markers are useful and can be suggested for analyzing of genetic diversity and population structure of this pathogen on different hosts.

Keywords

• Gray mold
• Genetic diversity
• Host differentiation
• ISSR
• SRAP
• Transposable elements