Characterization of Egyptian Botrytis cinerea Isolates from Different Host Plants

Abstract

Gray mold causes considerable economic losses of fruit and vegetable production. The current study on Egyptian population structure of Botrytis cinerea demonstrates that this species is com-posed of four TE genotypes: transposa, vacuma, boty and flipper types using transposable elements and sensitivity to the hydroxyanilide fungicide, fenhexamid. The results show that transposa is the predominant isolate type (63.6%) in the sampled populations of B. cinerea. However, the four iso-late types are fenhexamid-sensitive regardless of location, host plant and plant organ. Additionally, B. cinerea isolates collected from different host plants do not exhibit any host preference using ar-tificial infection test on lettuce. Furthermore, no relation is found between isolate type and ag-gressiveness and no divergence event has occurred among the isolates collected from different locations and host plants. The results suggest that host specialization of B. cinerea has not been occurred in the current sampled crops.