Cremenolide, a new antifungal, 10-member lactone from Trichoderma cremeum with plant growth promotion activity

This work is dedicated to the memory of Prof Emilio L. Ghisalberti for his studies on Trichoderma secondary metabolites.

Abstract

Trichoderma based products are considered an alternative to synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. These Trichoderma spp. are among the most studied and applied fungal BCAs in industry and agriculture and are known to secrete several secondary metabolites with different biological activities. The analysis of metabolic profiles (the ‘metabolome’) of Trichoderma species is complex because of the wide range of compounds produced and the molecular activities identified, including the recently determined role in the activation of plant resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses and growth promotion. A new 10-member lactone, but-2-enoic acid 7-acetoxy-6-hydroxy-2-methyl-10-oxo-5,6,7,8,9,10-hexahydro-2H-oxecin-5-yl ester, named cremenolide (1), has been isolated from culture filtrates of Trichoderma cremeum. The structure of cremenolide was determined by spectroscopic methods, including UV, MS, and 1D and 2D NMR analyses. In vitro tests showed that the purified compound inhibited the radial mycelium growth of Fusarium oxysporum, Botrytis cinerea and Rhizoctonia solani, and exerted a significant promotion of growth of tomato seedlings.

Keywords:

• Secondary metabolites
• Trichoderma
• plant growth promotion
• biocontrol
• 10-member lactone

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Corrigendum

Acknowledgments

The authors want to thank Prof. Jerzy Chelkowski and Dr Lidia Blaszczyk of the Institute of Plant Genetics of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Poznań, Poland that kindly have provided the strain 506 of T. cremeum. Moreover, we wish to thank Roberta Quarto and Roberta Panza for technical assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplemental data

The supplemental material for this paper is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14786419.2015.1131985.

Funding

This work was supported by the following projects: MIUR – PON [grant number Linfa 03PE_00026_1], [grant number Marea 03PE_00106], [grant number GenoPOM-pro 02_00395_3082360]; MIUR – GPS [grant number DM29156 Sicura]; PSR Campania Mis. 124 [grant number PIL]; MISE [grant number MI01_00308 GHW]; PSR Calabria Mis. 124 [grant number Rifiorire]; work by JS was supported by National Center of Sciences in Poland [grant number UMO-2014/12/T/NZ9/00535].

Notes

This work is dedicated to the memory of Prof Emilio L. Ghisalberti for his studies on Trichoderma secondary metabolites.