Phytophthora primulae
53
isolates with those of Kouyeas and Chitza-
nidis, since the last have been lost. Noviel-
lo and Snyder (14) described, for some
isolates, the compound sporangia of Tom-
linson; however the writers considered fi-
nally all isolates as
P.
syringae, based on
Tucker taxonomy (19) in spite of Tomlin-
son’s (18) description of the new species
P. primulae
. Our isolates from parsley were
confirmed as
P. primulae,
since the classi-
cal characterization and sequence analy-
sis were totally consistent. According the
two identification methods used in our
study, the most similar to
P. primulae
, was
P. porri
, isolated from lettuce (8). BPIC1989
(
P. porri
) and BPIC2584 (
P. primulae
) iso-
lates yielded identical PCR-RFLP patterns,
although they had been characterized as
different species by classical phytopatho-
logical methods and the ITS sequencing.
They also had different pathogenicity in
cross inoculation tests using the hosts
from where they were isolated (unpub-
lished data). The BPIC2514 isolate of
P. sy-
ringae
showed distinctive patterns in the
same test, separated from
P. primulae
and
P. porri
isolates. Employing restriction en-
zymes, to generate PCR-RFLP patterns, is
a simple and rapid method, useful to dis-
tinguish
Phytophthora
species; however,
morphological characteristics should also
be taken into account (4), specifically for
species with small differences in the DNA
band sizes that are difficult to estimate by
the common laboratory techniques.
The results of this study indicated that
in artificial inoculations only parsley was
susceptible to
P. primulae
, while all the
other tested vegetables were resistant;
parsley was resistant to other
Phytophtho-
ra
species tested. This disease caused by
P.
primulae
could be of importance for pars-
ley in areas where low soil temperatures
occur during winter.
To the best of our knowledge this is the
first report of
P. primulae
in Greece and the
second causing parsley disease worldwide.
We wish to thank Prof. Epaminondas Paploma-
tas for critical review of the manuscript and for
correcting the English text, as well as Sofia Mi-
gardou for her excellent technical assistance.
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