Phyllosticta capitalensis Causes Leaf Spot on Tea Plant (Camellia sinensis) in China

Abstract

Tea plants placed in China’s important economic crops list. The new fungal infection started with small lesions with reddish brown color edges, and it’s extended little large, numerous visible pycnidia were observed on the mature leaves of ten year old tea plant in Chizhou, Anhui Province, China in September 2018. To isolate the causal agent, the symptomatic leaves were randomly collected from the tea garden and were washed with tap water, followed by distilled water. The margins of infected leaves were cut into small pieces (4-5 mm²) and surface sterilized with 0.1% HgCl 2 for 1 min followed by 70% ethanol for 30 s, rinsed three times in sterile distilled water (Chen et al. 2016). Then, the pieces were blotted dry on sterilized filter paper and placed on 2% water agar, incubated in the dark at 28°C until fungal hyphae started to grow. Single hyphal tips were transferred onto potato dextrose agar (PDA) plates and incubated for 10 days at 28°C for phenotypic observations. Morphology of the colonies was exa...