First report of Seville root-knot nematode, Meloidogyne hispanica (Nematoda: Meloidogynidae) in the USA and North America

Andrea M Skantar; Zafar A Handoo; Sergei A Subbotin; Mihail R Kantor; Paulo Vieira; Paula Agudelo; Maria N Hult; Stephen Rogers

doi:10.21307/jofnem-2021-098

First report of Seville root-knot nematode, Meloidogyne hispanica (Nematoda: Meloidogynidae) in the USA and North America

J Nematol. 2021 Dec 1:53:e2021-98. doi: 10.21307/jofnem-2021-098. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Andrea M Skantar¹, Zafar A Handoo¹, Sergei A Subbotin^{2

3}, Mihail R Kantor¹, Paulo Vieira^{4

5}, Paula Agudelo⁶, Maria N Hult¹, Stephen Rogers¹

Affiliations

¹ Mycology and Nematology Genetic Diversity and Biology Laboratory, USDA, ARS, Northeast Area, Beltsville, MD, 20705.
² Plant Pest Diagnostic Center, California Department of Food and Agriculture, 3294 Meadowview Road, Sacramento, CA, 95832.
³ Center of Parasitology of A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Leninskii Prospect 33, Moscow, 117071, Russia.
⁴ USDA-ARS, Molecular Plant Pathology Laboratory, Beltsville, MD, 20705-2350.
⁵ School of Plant and Environmental Science, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, 24061.
⁶ School of Agricultural, Forest, and Environmental Sciences, Clemson University, Clemson, SC, 29634.

Abstract

A high number of second stage juveniles of the root-knot nematode were recovered from soil samples collected from a corn field, located in Pickens County, South Carolina, USA in 2019. Extracted nematodes were examined morphologically and molecularly for species identification which indicated that the specimens of root knot juveniles were Meloidogyne hispanica. The morphological examination and morphometric details from second-stage juveniles were consistent with the original description and redescriptions of this species. The ITS rRNA, D2-D3 expansion segments of 28S rRNA, intergenic COII-16S region, nad5 and COI gene sequences were obtained from the South Carolina population of M. hispanica. Phylogenetic analysis of the intergenic COII-16S region of mtDNA gene sequence alignment using statistical parsimony showed that the South Carolina population clustered with Meloidogyne hispanica from Portugal and Australia. To our best knowledge, this finding represents the first report of Meloidogyne hispanica in the USA and North America.

Keywords: Corn; Meloidogyne hispanica; North America.