Academic literature on the topic 'Trichoderma aggressivum'

Producers of champignon (Agaricus bisporus) and oyster mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus) are facing recent incidents of green mold epidemics in Hungary. We examined 66 Trichoderma strains isolated from Agaricus compost and Pleurotus substrate samples from three Hungarian mushroom producing companies by a polymerase chain reaction-based diagnostic test for T. aggressivum, sequence analysis of the internal transcribed spacer region 1 (ITS1) and ITS2 and (selectively) of the fourth and fifth intron of translation elongation factor 1α (tef1α), and restriction fragment length polymorphism of mitochondrial DNA. Seven Trichoderma species were identified: T. aggressivum f. europaeum (17 isolates), T. harzianum (three isolates), T. longibrachiatum (four isolates), T. ghanense (one isolate), T. asperellum (four isolates), T. atroviride (nine isolates), and a still undescribed phylogenetic species, Trichoderma sp. DAOM 175924 (28 isolates). T. aggressivum f. europaeum was exclusively derived from A. bisporus compost, whereas Trichoderma sp. DAOM 175924 exclusively occurred in the substrate for Pleurotus cultivation. Sequences of the latter strains were co-specific with those for Trichoderma pathogens of P. ostreatus in Korea. The widespread occurrence of this new species raises questions as to why infections by it have just only recently been observed. Our data document that (i) green mold disease by T. aggressivum f. europaeum has geographically expanded to Central Europe; (ii) the green mold disease of P. ostreatus in Hungary is due to the same Trichoderma species as in Korea and the worldwide distribution of the new species indicates the possibility of spreading epidemics; and (iii) on mushroom farms, the two species are specialized on their different substrates.

The competitor fungus Trichoderma aggressivum causes green mould disease, a potentially devastating problem of the commercial mushroom Agaricus bisporus. Due to the recent appearance of this problem, very little is known about the mechanisms by which T. aggressivum interacts with and inhibits A. bisporus. A mechanism generally used by Trichoderma species in the antagonism of other fungi is the secretion of cell wall degrading enzymes. In this study, we determined the activities of chitinases produced in dual cultures of these fungi over a 2 week period. Both intracellular and extracellular enzymes were studied. Agaricus bisporus produced N-acetylglucosaminidases with apparent molecular masses of 111, 105, and 96 kDa. Two resistant brown strains produced greater activities of the 96 kDa N-acetylglucosaminidase than susceptible off-white and white strains. This result suggested that this enzyme might have a role in the resistance of commercial brown strains to green mould disease. Trichoderma aggressivum produced three N-acetylglucosaminidases with apparent molecular masses of 131, 125, and 122 kDa, a 40 kDa chitobiosidase, and a 36 kDa endochitinase. The 122 kDa N-acetylglucosaminidase showed the greatest activity and may be an important predictor of antifungal activity.Key words: mushrooms, chitinases, Trichoderma, Agaricus.

This present study evaluates three isolates of Trichoderma as plant growth promoting or biological control agents: Trichoderma aggressivum f. sp. europaeum, Trichoderma saturnisporum, and the marine isolate obtained from Posidonia oceanica, Trichoderma longibrachiatum. The purpose is to contribute to an overall reduction in pesticide residues in the fruit and the environment and to a decrease in chemical fertilizers, the excess of which aggravates one of the most serious abiotic stresses, salinity. The tolerance of the different isolates to increasing concentrations of sodium chloride was evaluated in vitro, as well as their antagonistic capacity against Pythium ultimum. The plant growth promoting capacity and effects of Trichoderma strains on the severity of P. ultimum on melon seedlings under saline conditions were also analysed. The results reveal that the three isolates of Trichoderma, regardless of their origin, alleviate the stress produced by salinity, resulting in larger plants with an air-dry weight percentage above 80% in saline stress conditions for T. longibrachiatum, or an increase in root-dry weight close to 50% when T. aggressivum f. sp. europaeum was applied. Likewise, the three isolates showed antagonistic activity against P. ultimum, reducing the incidence of the disease, with the highest response found for T. longibrachiatum. Biological control of P. ultimum by T. aggressivum f. sp. europaeum and T. saturnisporum is reported for the first time, reducing disease severity by 62.96% and 51.85%, respectively. This is the first description of T. aggressivum f. sp. europaeum as a biological control agent and growth promoter. The application of these isolates can be of enormous benefit to horticultural crops, in both seedbeds and greenhouses.

Since the early 1990s, the epidemic of green mold on the cultivated mushroom Agaricus bisporus in North America has been caused by Trichoderma aggressivum f. aggressivum. The findings of earlier research suggested that the microevolutionary emergence of T. aggressivum f. aggressivum coincided with the onset of the epidemic. This hypothesis was tested further by determining the disease susceptibility of mushroom strains grown widely before the epidemic manifested. The results of complementary methods of analysis, which entailed a grain protection assay and cropping trials, established that two pre-epidemic strains were more susceptible to green mold than three post-epidemic strains being cultivated at the time of the epidemic. Thus, if T. aggressivum f. aggressivum had been present within cultivated mushrooms prior to the epidemic, it should have been detected. It still appears to be true that T. aggressivum f. aggressivum emerged during the 1990s in a manner that remains unclear.

Green mold is a serious disease of the cultivated mushroom causing losses in production of economical importance. In the present study, digestion of a Th444 amplicon with endonuclease BseGI was useful to discriminate Trichoderma aggressivum f. aggressivum (T.a.f.a) from the T. aggressivum f. europeanum (T.a.f.e.). The informative restriction fragments of 260 and 300 bp were revealed in the corresponding reference strains T.a.f.a. and T.a.f.e. The 300-bp marker was found in all 28 Polish mushroom isolates tested.

ABSTRACT The worldwide commercial production of the oyster mushroom Pleurotus ostreatus is currently threatened by massive attacks of green mold disease. Using an integrated approach to species recognition comprising analyses of morphological and physiological characters and application of the genealogical concordance of multiple phylogenetic markers (internal transcribed spacer 1 [ITS1] and ITS2 sequences; partial sequences of tef1 and chi18-5), we determined that the causal agents of this disease were two genetically closely related, but phenotypically strongly different, species of Trichoderma, which have been recently described as Trichoderma pleurotum and Trichoderma pleuroticola. They belong to the Harzianum clade of Hypocrea/Trichoderma which also includes Trichoderma aggressivum, the causative agent of green mold disease of Agaricus. Both species have been found on cultivated Pleurotus and its substratum in Europe, Iran, and South Korea, but T. pleuroticola has also been isolated from soil and wood in Canada, the United States, Europe, Iran, and New Zealand. T. pleuroticola displays pachybasium-like morphological characteristics typical of its neighbors in the Harzianum clade, whereas T. pleurotum is characterized by a gliocladium-like conidiophore morphology which is uncharacteristic of the Harzianum clade. Phenotype MicroArrays revealed the generally impaired growth of T. pleurotum on numerous carbon sources readily assimilated by T. pleuroticola and T. aggressivum. In contrast, the Phenotype MicroArray profile of T. pleuroticola is very similar to that of T. aggressivum, which is suggestive of a close genetic relationship. In vitro confrontation reactions with Agaricus bisporus revealed that the antagonistic potential of the two new species against this mushroom is perhaps equal to T. aggressivum. The P. ostreatus confrontation assays showed that T. pleuroticola has the highest affinity to overgrow mushroom mycelium among the green mold species. We conclude that the evolutionary pathway of T. pleuroticola could be in parallel to other saprotrophic and mycoparasitic species from the Harzianum clade and that this species poses the highest infection risk for mushroom farms, whereas T. pleurotum could be specialized for an ecological niche connected to components of Pleurotus substrata in cultivation. A DNA BarCode for identification of these species based on ITS1 and ITS2 sequences has been provided and integrated in the main database for Hypocrea/Trichoderma (www.ISTH.info ).

Abstract The effect of different Trichoderma species on the yield of Agaricus bisporus strains was investigated in this study. For the first time, the effect of different Trichoderma species on the yield of Agaricus bisporus strains was determined under fully controlled conditions. Four button mushroom strains were used: Somycel 53, Somycel 11, Amycel 2200, and Polmycel 31. The cultivation substrate was inoculated with the following Trichoderma species: T. aggressivum f. europaeum, T. atroviride, T. hamatum, T. harzianum, T. inhamatum, T. koningii, and T. longibrachiatum. Except for T. atroviride, all the Trichoderma isolates reduced the yield of the button mushroom strains.

Our purpose was to evaluate the ability of Trichoderma aggressivum f. europaeum as a biological control agent against diseases from fungal phytopathogens. Twelve isolates of T. aggressivum f. europaeum were obtained from several substrates used for Agaricus bisporus cultivation from farms in Castilla-La Mancha (Spain). Growth rates of the 12 isolates were determined, and their antagonistic activity was analysed in vitro against Botrytis cinerea, Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, Fusarium solani f. cucurbitae, Pythium aphanidermatum, Rhizoctonia solani, and Mycosphaerella melonis, and all isolates had high growth rates. T. aggressivum f. europaeum showed high antagonistic activity for different phytopathogens, greater than 80%, except for P. aphanidermatum at approximately 65%. The most effective isolate, T. aggressivum f. europaeum TAET1, inhibited B. cinerea, S. sclerotiorum, and M. melonis growth by 100% in detached leaves assay and inhibited germination of S. sclerotiorum sclerotia. Disease incidence and severity in plant assays for pathosystems ranged from 22% for F. solani to 80% for M. melonis. This isolate reduced the incidence of Podosphaera xanthii in zucchini leaves by 66.78%. The high compatibility by this isolate with fungicides could allow its use in combination with different pest management strategies. Based on the results, T. aggressivum f. europaeum TAET1 should be considered for studies in commercial greenhouses as a biological control agent.

Les pertes alimentaires mondiales se chiffrent à environ un tiers des aliments destinés à la consommation humaine, soit environ 1,3 milliards de tonnes par an (FAO). Une large fraction de ces pertes est due aux altérations microbiologiques des denrées alimentaires. L’utilisation de produits phytosanitaires reste aujourd’hui la solution la plus largement utilisée en agriculture pour limiter ces pertes. Cependant, avec le plan EcoPhyto 2, le gouvernement français a pour objectif de réduire de 50% l’usage des pesticides chimiques d’ici 2025, en particulier en promouvant l’émergence du biocontrôle. Pour développer cette approche, il est cependant nécessaire de comprendre, pour mieux les maitriser, les mécanismes sous-jacents. Les différents modes d’action de biocontrôle par les microorganismes décrits sont la stimulation des défenses naturelles des plantes, la production de substances antimicrobienne et la compétition nutritionnelle. L'originalité de ce projet est d'intégrer le mode de vie en biofilm dans les mécanismes de bioprotection (compétition spatiale et nutritionnelle, libération de principes antimicrobiens). Dans la filière Française des champignons de couche (Agaricus bisporus), l’agent de biocontrôle utilisé depuis 2008 par plus de 80 % de la filière, est Bacillus subtilis QST713. Ce biofongicide montre une nette efficacité contre Trichoderma aggressivum, la principale moisissure à l’origine de pertes économiques lors de la culture d’A. bisporus. Afin d’accompagner la filière dans cette voie biologique, nous avons entrepris de séquencer et étudier le génome de cette souche, afin de déterminer son potentiel de biocontrôle et sa capacité à former des biofilms. Nous avons également évalué l’impact de ce biofongicide sur la dynamique des communautés microbiennes du compost de culture d’A. bisporus exposé ou non à T. aggressivum. Enfin, l'étude de la reprogrammation cellulaire de cet agent de biocontrôle lors de sa culture en micromodèles axéniques, nous a permis une meilleure compréhension des phénomènes de colonisation des substrats et d'inhibition des flores indésirables. Ce projet a permis d’enrichir les connaissances vis-à-vis des mécanismes de biocontrôle dans la filière des champignons et pourra permettre une possible application à d’autres filières agricoles
Worldwide, food losses amount for about one-third of food for human consumption, 1.3 billion tons per year (FAO). A large fraction of these losses are due to microbiological alterations. The use of phytosanitary products remains today the most widely used solution in agriculture to limit these losses. However, with the EcoPhyto 2 plan, the French government aims to reduce the use of chemical pesticides by 50% by 2025, in particular by promoting the emergence of biocontrol. To develop this approach, it is necessary to understand the underlying mechanisms. The different modes of action of biocontrol by the microorganisms described are the stimulation of the natural defenses of the plants, the production of antimicrobial substances and the nutritional competition. The originality of this project is to integrate the biofilm mode of life into bioprotection mechanisms (spatial and nutritional competition, release of antimicrobial principles). In the French sector of the button mushrooms (Agaricus bisporus) culture, the biocontrol agent used since 2008 by more than 80% of the sector, is Bacillus subtilis QST713. This biofungicide shows a clear efficacy against Trichoderma aggressivum, the main mold causing economic losses during the cultivation of A. bisporus. To accompany the sector in this biological pathway, we have sequenced and studied the genome of this strain, in order to determine its biocontrol potential and its ability to form biofilms. We also evaluated the impact of this biofungicide on the dynamics of microbial communities in A. bisporus culture compost exposed or not to T. aggressivum. Finally, the study of the cellular reprogramming of this biocontrol agent during the culture in axenic micromodels allowed us a better understanding of the substrates colonization phenomenon and the inhibition of undesirable flora. This project will enrich the knowledge of the biocontrol mechanisms used in the mushroom industry and may allow a possible application to other agricultural sectors