The December 2022 observation on Cucurbita pepo L. var. plants included blossom blight, abortion, and soft rot of fruits. Controlled greenhouse environments in Mexico support the growth of zucchini, featuring temperatures ranging from 10 to 32 degrees Celsius and maintaining a relative humidity of up to 90%. Approximately 70% of the 50 plants analyzed exhibited the disease, with a severity rating close to 90%. Fruit rot, along with mycelial growth featuring brown sporangiophores, was seen on flower petals. Fruit tissues, 10 in number, disinfected in 1% sodium hypochlorite solution for 5 minutes, were then rinsed twice with distilled water. These tissues, harvested from the lesion margins, were inoculated onto a potato dextrose agar (PDA) medium, supplemented with lactic acid. Subsequently, morphological analysis was conducted using V8 agar medium. Forty-eight hours of growth at 27°C resulted in colonies of a pale yellow color, characterized by diffuse, cottony, non-septate, hyaline mycelia. These produced both sporangiophores bearing sporangiola and sporangia. Brown, longitudinally striated sporangiola, ranging morphologically from ellipsoid to ovoid, measured 227 to 405 (298) micrometers in length and 1608 to 219 (145) micrometers in width, respectively (n=100). The sporangia, subglobose in form, exhibited diameters ranging from 1272 to 28109 micrometers (n=50) in 2017 and contained ovoid sporangiospores. These sporangiospores measured 265 to 631 (average 467) micrometers long by 2007 to 347 (average 263) micrometers wide (n=100) and featured hyaline appendages at their ends. Analyzing these properties, the conclusion was drawn that the fungus is Choanephora cucurbitarum, as reported in Ji-Hyun et al. (2016). For molecular characterization of two representative strains (CCCFMx01 and CCCFMx02), the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) and large subunit rRNA 28S (LSU) regions were amplified and sequenced using ITS1-ITS4 and NL1-LR3 primer pairs respectively, according to the methodologies described by White et al. (1990) and Vilgalys and Hester (1990). Both strains' ITS and LSU sequences were cataloged in the GenBank database under accession numbers OQ269823-24 and OQ269827-28, respectively. The Blast alignment comparison of the reference sequence against Choanephora cucurbitarum strains JPC1 (MH041502, MH041504), CCUB1293 (MN897836), PLR2 (OL790293), and CBS 17876 (JN206235, MT523842) showed an identity of 99.84% to 100%. In order to validate the species identification of C. cucurbitarum and related mucoralean species, concatenated ITS and LSU sequences were subjected to evolutionary analyses using the Maximum Likelihood method and the Tamura-Nei model incorporated in MEGA11. Employing a sporangiospores suspension (1 x 10⁵ esp/mL) applied to two sites (20 µL each) per surface-sterilized zucchini fruit, pre-wounded with a sterile needle, the pathogenicity test was performed using five fruits. Fruit control necessitated the utilization of 20 liters of sterile water. After three days of inoculation at 27°C in a humid environment, the development of white mycelia and sporangiola growth was evident, along with a soaked lesion. No fruit damage was noted on the control specimens. Reisolated from lesions on PDA and V8 medium, C. cucurbitarum was morphologically characterized, thus fulfilling Koch's postulates. Cucurbita pepo and C. moschata in Slovenia and Sri Lanka experienced blossom blight, abortion, and soft rot of fruits, a consequence of infection by C. cucurbitarum, as documented by Zerjav and Schroers (2019) and Emmanuel et al. (2021). Various plant species worldwide can be infected by this pathogen, as demonstrated in the studies of Kumar et al. (2022) and Ryu et al. (2022). In Mexico, C. cucurbitarum has not yet been implicated in agricultural losses, and this represents the initial identification of this fungus causing disease symptoms in Cucurbita pepo. This discovery, despite prior undetected presence, highlights its importance as a plant pathogen, confirmed by its presence in papaya-producing regions. Accordingly, strategies for their management are strongly recommended to prevent the disease's transmission, according to Cruz-Lachica et al. (2018).

The months of March through June 2022 witnessed a Fusarium tobacco root rot outbreak in Shaoguan, Guangdong Province, China, severely impacting roughly 15% of tobacco fields, with infection rates fluctuating between 24% and 66%. During the initial stages, the lower leaves displayed a condition of chlorosis, and the roots became a dark color. As the plants matured, the leaves turned brown and shriveled, the root tissues fragmented and fell away, leaving a few remaining roots. All life in the plant, in the course of time, concluded with the plant's full extinction. Six plant samples (cultivar unspecified) displaying disease were subjected to further investigation. Test materials were sourced from the Yueyan 97 location within Shaoguan, geographically positioned at 113.8 degrees east longitude and 24.8 degrees north latitude. For surface sterilization, 44 mm diseased root tissues were treated with 75% ethanol (30 seconds) and 2% sodium hypochlorite (10 minutes), followed by three sterile-water rinses. Incubation on potato dextrose agar (PDA) medium at 25°C for four days allowed fungal colony development. Subcultured onto fresh PDA plates, the colonies were further grown for five days before purification via single-spore isolation. Eleven isolates, presenting analogous morphological structures, were selected. Five days of incubation yielded pale pink culture plate bottoms, beneath a surface of white and fluffy colonies. With 3 to 5 septa, the macroconidia were slender, slightly curved, and measured 1854 to 4585 m235 to 384 m (n=50). Microconidia, with a form that was either oval or spindle-shaped, contained one to two cells and measured 556 to 1676 m232 to 386 m in size, (n=50). There were no chlamydospores. The Fusarium genus, according to Booth (1971), exhibits these particular characteristics. For the purpose of further molecular analysis, the SGF36 isolate was chosen. The TEF-1 and -tubulin genes, whose sequences are detailed in Pedrozo et al. (2015), were subjected to amplification. Phylogenetic analysis, employing the neighbor-joining method with 1000 bootstrap replicates, and based on multiplex alignments of concatenated sequences of two genes from 18 Fusarium species, demonstrated the clustering of SGF36 within the same clade as Fusarium fujikuroi strain 12-1 (MK4432681/MK4432671) and isolate BJ-1 (MH2637361/MH2637371). In order to definitively identify the isolate, five additional gene sequences—rDNA-ITS (OP8628071), RPB2, histone 3, calmodulin, and mitochondrial small subunit—drawn from Pedrozo et al. (2015)—underwent BLAST searches within the GenBank repository. The outcomes suggested the isolate's strongest genetic similarity lay with F. fujikuroi sequences, exhibiting sequence identities exceeding 99%. Based on a phylogenetic tree generated from six gene sequences (excluding the mitochondrial small subunit gene), the strain SGF36 was grouped together with four strains of F. fujikuroi, forming a distinct clade. Potted tobacco plants served as the environment for inoculating wheat grains with fungi, thereby assessing pathogenicity. Sterilized wheat grains were inoculated with the SGF36 strain and then incubated for seven days at a temperature of 25 degrees Celsius. autophagosome biogenesis To 200 grams of sterile soil, thirty wheat grains, each carrying a fungal infestation, were painstakingly added, the mixture thoroughly blended, and then placed into pots. A tobacco seedling, at the six-leaf stage (cv.), was a subject of examination. Each pot was populated with a yueyan 97 plant. Treatment was performed on twenty tobacco seedlings. Twenty more control seedlings were supplied with fungi-free wheat grains. All the young plants, the seedlings, were put into a greenhouse, ensuring a consistent temperature of 25 degrees Celsius and a relative humidity of 90 percent. Five days after inoculation, a noticeable chlorosis was observed in the leaves of every inoculated seedling, coupled with a discoloration of the roots. The controls exhibited no observable symptoms. Following reisolation from symptomatic roots, the fungus was identified as F. fujikuroi through analysis of the TEF-1 gene sequence. No F. fujikuroi isolates were obtained from the control plants. F. fujikuroi has been previously reported to be associated with three plant diseases: rice bakanae disease (Ram et al., 2018), soybean root rot (Zhao et al., 2020), and cotton seedling wilt (Zhu et al., 2020). In our assessment, this report is the first account of F. fujikuroi being a causative agent of root wilt in tobacco cultivated in China. The process of recognizing the pathogen is crucial for the development of effective measures to contain this illness.

He et al. (2005) noted the use of Rubus cochinchinensis, an important traditional Chinese medicine, for treating rheumatic arthralgia, bruises, and lumbocrural pain. Tunchang City, Hainan Province, China's tropical island, experienced a yellowing of the R. cochinchinensis leaves during January 2022. The green leaf veins stood in stark contrast to the spreading chlorosis along the vascular pathways (Figure 1). Besides the above, the leaves presented a reduced size, and the strength of the growth pattern was inadequate (Figure 1). A survey revealed a disease incidence of approximately 30%. Forensic pathology Using the TIANGEN plant genomic DNA extraction kit, total DNA was extracted from three etiolated samples and three healthy samples, each weighing 0.1 gram. Utilizing the nested PCR method, phytoplasma universal primers, P1/P7 (Schneider et al., 1995) and R16F2n/R16R2 (Lee et al. 1993), were employed to amplify the phytoplasma 16S rRNA gene. Cerdulatinib Primers rp F1/R1, described in Lee et al. (1998), and rp F2/R2, detailed in Martini et al. (2007), were employed to amplify the rp gene. The 16S rDNA gene and rp gene fragments were amplified from three etiolated leaf specimens, in contrast to the absence of amplification from healthy specimens. The amplified and cloned DNA fragments' sequences were assembled by DNASTAR11. In the sequence alignment of the 16S rDNA and rp gene sequences, the three leaf etiolated samples exhibited identical genetic profiles.