Home • Erysiphe pisi Palampur-1 v2.0
Erysiphe pisi on pea plants.
Erysiphe pisi on pea plants.
Image Credit: Divya Chandran

Erysiphe pisi is an obligate biotrophic fungal phytopathogen, belonging to the class Leotiomycetes and order Erysiphales. It is the most widely documented species responsible for powdery mildew disease in pea. Erysiphe pisi is capable of infecting all above-ground parts of the pea crop (leaves, pods and stem), and causes yield reduction of about 25–35% in severely affected fields (Kumar and Singh, 1981). In addition, the fungus affects the quality of pods and seeds for human consumption and renders the forage unsuitable for animal feeding. The Palampur-1 strain of E. pisi was isolated from the Tanda village (Kangra district) in the state of Himachal Pradesh, India (Banyal et al., 2014). It shows typical powdery mildew characteristics, initiating as small diffused colonies with abundant superficial white mycelia mostly observed on the upper epidermis of the leaf. It eventually covers the entire leaf surface with spores, giving the disease a white powdery appearance. Conidia are cylindrical in shape and are produced singly on aerial unbranched conidiophores. Appressoria are multi-lobed, usually occurring singly on hyphae. Haustoria are smooth, ovoid to round in shape, and formed within plant epidermal cells (Falloon and Vijanen-Rollinson, 2001). The E. pisi genome sequence is expected to reveal novel insights into the biotrophic infection strategies of this plant pathogen, including its repertoire of effector proteins and cell wall degrading enzymes.

 

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