Globalization, landscape alteration and climate change are factors that make it easier for alien organisms to overcome geographical barriers and unfavorable environmental conditions in a new area. All over the world these species cause biological, economic and social problems. Cytisus scoparius is an invasive plant in Lithuania. Along with this plant, its pathogenic fungi are introduced into new areas. Their diversity has still not been evaluated. This type of data is lacking for further studies on the interaction between invasive and native plants.
Fungi of the genus Diaporthe are plant, human or other mammal pathogens, endophytes and saprotrophs. It is an economically important group of pathogenic microorganisms that cause diseases for agricultural, wild and ornamental plants. Based on morphology, it is difficult to distinguish the species of this genus due to phenotypic plasticity. In Lithuania Diaporthe fungi was not yet intensively studied. The main aim of this work was to assess the diversity of fungi on C. scoparius.
During the study, 44 samples of damaged C. scoparius plants were collected in 9 different areas of Lithuania, from which 235 fungal cultures were isolated. After evaluating the characteristics and micromorphological features of fungal colonies, they were assigned to 78 morphological groups. All representatives of these morphogroups were identified by molecular methods. Different genera were identified according to the ITS sequence using ITS1 and ITS4 primers [1]: Kalmusia, Diaporthe, Fusarium, Alternaria, Chondrostereum, Neonectria, Eutypa, Epicoccum, etc. The most common genera on C. scoparius are Kalmusia, Diaporthe and Fusarium. To identify the fungi of the genus Diaporthe to species, their ACT, CAL, TEF-1 and TUB genes were sequenced using ACT-512F/ACT-783R, CAL-228F/CAL737R, EF1-728F/EF1-986R [2], Bt-2a/BT-2b [3] primers. It showed that several different species of Diaporthe are associated with C. scoparius. To sum up, microbiota studies provide new information about the prevalence of fungal microorganisms on invasive plants in Lithuania and give more data on the potential threat to local ecosystems.