Identification of Colletotrichum species responsible for anthracnose of strawberry based on the internal transcribed spacers pf the ribosomal region

In recent years, different molecular techniques have led to an important pr ogress in the characterisation of Colletotrichum species, but there are no available methods which permit the easy identification of Colletotrichum st rains and their assignation to classical species. In the present work, the restriction patterns generated from the region spanning the internal transc ribed spacers (ITS1 and ITS2) and the 5.8S rRNA gene, were used to identify a total of 80 strains of Colletotrichum, the majority of them isolated fro m strawberry. One of the most interesting results derived from this study w as the easy and reliable distinction, using the endonuclease MvnI, between Colletotrichum fragariae and Colletotrichum gloeosporoides, both responsibl e of anthracnose on strawberry and phenotypically indistinguishable. Moreov er, we propose the restriction fragments generated by the endonucleases Mvn I, PvuII and ScrFI as a rapid method to differentiate species of the Collet otrichum genus. (C) 2000 Federation of European Microbiological Societies. Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.