LAUSR

The agave crop (Agave angustifolia), is of economic importance for Mexico, for the agave is made mainly an alcoholic beverage called locally mezcal. In the state of Guerrero, in the municipality of Huitzuco de los Figueroa (18.2510026N, 99.2320182W, 1196 m above sea level), a severe disease affecting agave leaves was detected. The field symptoms consisted of pale to brown dark descending lesions, covering >50% of the leaf surface, in which the presence of pycnidia was observed. In an estimated area of 0.5 ha, the estimated incidence was 67% (n=100 plants). Symptomatic fragments from leaves (approximately 0.5 cm) were taken, superficially disinfected with 1% NaClO, and rinsed twice with sterile distilled water. Then they were transferred to potato dextrose agar (PDA) medium, and incubated at 28 °C. After five days, twelve representative isolates were selected and purified by the hyphal tip technique. In the PDA medium, the colonies were initially light gray, later they became dark, and after 22 days of incubation, the development of numerous dark pycnidia was observed on the surface of the medium. Initially, immature hyaline conidia, unicellular, oval, and double-walled were observed. The mature conidia were dark brown, oval, with one septum and longitudinal striation, and measured 17.5 to 27 [average 25.3 µm; n=50] × 10.5 to 15.7 [average 13.9 µm; n=50]. Based on the morphological characteristics, the fungus was identified as Lasiodiplodia theobromae (Pat.) Griffon & Maubl. (Alves et al. 2008). Isolates LAS3 and LAS4 were used for molecular identification, this was done by amplifying the regio internal transcribed spacer (ITS) of rDNA with primers ITS1 and ITS4 (White et al. 1990) and translation elongation factor 1-alpha ( EF-1α) genes using primers EF1-728F/EF1-986R (Carbone and Kohn 1999). The resulting sequences were deposited in GenBank (LAS3; ON391564 and LAS4; ON391565 for ITS, and LAS3; ON368190 and LAS4; ON368191 for EF-1α). BLASTn analysis sequences of isolated LAS3 and LAS4 revealed for ITS 98.6% identity with L. theobromae (MK934699.1), and for EF-1α indicated 100% identity (MF422024.1). From concatenated sequences ITS-EF-1α regions, a phylogenetic analysis was carried out in MEGA X software, using the Maximum Likelihood and Kimura 2-parameter model with 1,000 bootstraps replicated; isolates LAS3 and LAS4 were clustered in the clade of the members of L. theobromae strains CAA006 (Alves et al. 2006), and INTA-IMC 1601 (Perez et al. 2018). The pathogenicity tests were carried out on 10 healthy 3 year-old agave plants, in which the mycelium of the LAS4 isolate was inserted at three equidistant points/leaf, using a sterile toothpick. Five healthy agave plants were inoculated only with sterile PDA as control treatment. The inoculated plants were covered with transparent plastic bags and housed in a greenhouse at 28 °C. After seven days, similar symptoms to those observed in the field were observed in all inoculated plants. Control plants did not develop symptoms. The fungus L. theobromae was re-isolated again from the infected leaves, fulfilling Koch's postulates. In China, L. theobromae has been reported as the cause of leaf rot on A. sisalana (Xie et al. 2016). To our knowledge, this is the first report of L. theobromae causing leaf rot on A. angustifolia in Mexico. This research is useful to design management strategies for leaf rot disease for local farmers of A. angustifolia.