Soil inoculum production, survival, and infectivity of the boxwood blight pathogen, Calonectria pseudonaviculata

Abstract

Boxwood blight caused by Calonectria pseudonaviculata is typically expressed as a foliage disease with aboveground symptoms including defoliation, dieback and formation of dark narrow stem cankers. Whether this pathogen behaves like other Calonectria spp. and has a significant soil phase in the epidemiology of boxwood blight is not known. In this study we observed experimentally that (1) the boxwood blight pathogen consistently forms microsclerotia in artificially inoculated leaves and roots of Buxus spp., (2) soil artificially inoculated with conidia and microsclerotia of this pathogen can cause foliar blight, (3) conidia and microsclerotia can remain viable in soil for up to 3 and at least 40 weeks, respectively (4) and the pathogen can cause crown and root rot to plants only when roots and crowns are directly exposed to relatively high inoculum levels. Our results suggest that C. pseudonaviculata is primarily a foliar pathogen with a potentially epidemiologically significant soil phase.