Abstract
Species of Botrytis are responsible for heavy losses in a number of economically important horticultural and floral crops, the most important being Botrytis cinerea. Most species, except B. cinerea, have a limited host range attacking either monocotyledonous or dicotyledonous plants. Within the genus there are about 28 well-described species but new species continue to be isolated. Most species are opportunist growing as saprophytes on dead and decaying matter but have the ability to become aggressive pathogens under environmental conditions adverse to their hosts. Evidence that some species can be present as endophtyes (non-symptomatic) is increasing, as is evidence that such infections may either become aggressive at a later stage, notably at flowering time, or be transferred non-symptomatically by clonal or seed propagation of the host. Both the sexual and asexual stages are known for B. cinerea. The common method of dispersal of nearly all species is the production of asexual spores (macroconidia, common name conidia) dispersed by wind or water. Survival from one season to the next is generally by the production of sclerotia. Infections are most easily recognized by the appearance of characteristic grey conidial clusters on the surfaces of infected material but early detection, pre-conidiation or in non-symptomatically infected material is difficult; commonly surface sterilization or freezing of material followed by plating out on selective media is used. Detection at the species level requires molecular methods with species-specific probes. Detection and quantification, at the genus level, in extracts from infected tissues, juice and wines, is relatively easy using commercially produced rapid Lateral Flow immunological devices.
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(Molly), F.M.D., Grant-Downton, R. (2016). Botrytis-Biology, Detection and Quantification. In: Fillinger, S., Elad, Y. (eds) Botrytis – the Fungus, the Pathogen and its Management in Agricultural Systems. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23371-0_2
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