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Abstract
Nine species of fungi on the aquatic weed Sagittaria montevidensis (arrowhead) in southern and southeastern Brazil were collected, identified, described and illustrated in a survey for possible biological control agents against this weed. Seven of them are anamorphic fungi, Alternaria alternata, Botrytis cinerea, Cercospora apii, Cercospora sagittariae, Colletotrichum gloeosporioides, Plectosporium alismatis and Pseudocercospora arthrospora, and two smut fungi, Doassansiopsis deformans and Narasimhania alismatis. All represent new host records or new geographic localities for occurrences of the fungi. Pseudocercospora arthrospora is new to science. It differs from known species of genus Pseudocercospora mainly by its subhyaline and disarticulating conidia and host. This fungus is close to Thedgonia but can be distinguished for this genus by its conidiogenesis. Based on the description and disease symptoms Cylindrocarpon sagittariae, recorded on S. trifolia from Japan, is regarded here as a later synonym of Plectosporium alismatis. Preliminary observations of the fungi in the field and in culture suggest that four of these have potential for use as biocontrol agents against S. montevidensis, namely C. sagittariae, C. gloeosporioides, P. alismatis and P. arthrospora.
This work forms part of a research project submitted as a doctoral dissertation to the Departamento de Fitopatologia/Universidade Federal de Viçosa by D.J. Soares. The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for valuable suggestions to improve the text. This work was partially supported by Fundação de Amparo á Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais (FAPEMIG) Project CRA 1786/05 and by Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) Project 482720/2007-7. The first author also thanks Eric Cother, Meike Piepenbring, Kálmán Vánky and Marcin Piątek for providing useful and relevant references.