Field and Laboratory Procedures for Fusarium circinatum Identification and Diagnosis

Abstract

Fusarium circinatum is a serious invasive pathogen affecting conifers and causes the disease commonly known as pine pitch canker. Due to the outbreak in European countries, regulations stipulate that Member States must conduct annual official surveys for the fungus on their territory and report the results to the European Commission. Here, we describe the field and laboratory protocols used for the identification and diagnostic of the pathogen.

Keywords: Agarose gel electrophoresis; Identification; Internal transcribes spacer of the rRNA; PCR amplification; Pine pitch canker; Real-time PCR; Sampling; Sanger sequencing.