Wide Distribution and Intraspecies Diversity in the Pathogenicity of in Soil from Plantations in Southern Guangxi of China.

spp. are extensively cultivated in southern China because of their adaptability and versatile timber production. leaf blight caused by species is considered a major threat to trees planted in China. The GuangXi Zhuang Autonomous Region is the provincial region with the largest distribution of plantations in China. The present study aimed to expound the species diversity and pathogenicity of isolates obtained from the soil of plantations in GuangXi. A total of 188 isolates were recovered from the soil located close to trees, and the isolates were identified based on the DNA sequence comparisons of the four partial regions of the translation elongation factor 1-alpha (), β-tubulin (), calmodulin (), and histone H3 () genes. The isolates were identified as (74.5%), . (21.3%), . (2.1%), . (1.6%), and . (0.5%). The inoculation results indicated that 40 isolates representing five species were pathogenic to the three genotypes. Two inoculated experiments consistently showed that the longest lesions were produced by the isolates of . . Some isolates of . , . , and . produced significantly longer lesions than the positive controls, but not the isolates of . or . . These results indicated that isolated from the soil may pose a threat to plantations. Some isolates of the same species differed significantly in their virulence in the tested genotypes. The resistance of different genotypes to isolates within the same species was inconsistent. The inoculation results in this study suggested that many isolates in each species had different levels of pathogenicity, and many genotypes need to be tested to select disease-resistant genetic materials in the future. The results of the present study enhance our knowledge of species diversity and the potential damage caused by in the soil of plantations. Our results also provide new insights into the breeding of disease-resistant genotypes for controlling leaf blight in China in the future.