sp. nov. a New Fungal Pathogen Causing Stem Cankers and Twig Dieback of Fruit Trees.

Stem cankers and twig dieback were the most serious disease of fig () and loquat () noticed in a survey of fruit tree orchards in the Fars Province, Iran. Isolates of were consistently recovered from symptomatic fig and loquat trees. Phylogenetic analyses of multiple nuclear loci, internal transcribed spacer regions (ITS) of rDNA, RNA polymerase II subunit 2 (), and translation elongation factor 1-α (), combined with morphological observations, revealed that isolates could be referred to a still unknown taxon, which was formally described as sp. nov. Phylogenetically, isolates from fig and loquat trees clustered in a well-supported monophyletic group within the clade of , closely related to . sp. nov. was characterized by the lack of stilbella-like asexual structure in both natural substrates and pure cultures and produced two morphologically distinct types of conidia, globose and cylindrical, formed on short and long simple phialides. In pathogenicity tests, sp. nov. induced stem cankers in both fig and loquat, wood discoloration in fig and twig dieback in loquat. Pathogenicity tests also showed that the potential host range of this novel pathogen includes other economically relevant horticultural trees.