Abstract
During a study of the phenomena of resistance and susceptibility of plants to pathic events, experiments have been made to determine whether serological techniques could be used as tools for the study of phytopathogenic microparasites, and of their parasitic and pathogenic relations to plants. In the course of experiments from 1925 to 1928 it was found that in many cases serological specificity of phytopathogenic schizomycetes as manifested in the agglutination test apparently is correlated with host, and even symptom specificity within the same host. Incidentally, Sharp made the first report of finding a smooth virulent, and a rough avirulent strain of a phytopathogenic bacterium, Phytomonus phaseoli sojense, which parasitizes the soy bean plant. 1
We chose next to determine whether serological techniques could be used in the study of phytopathogenic fungi and their nonpathogenic taxonomic allies.† To put the methods to severe test we chose to begin with members of the form genus Fusarium, phytopathogenically the most important genus of the division Phragmosporae of the so-called “fungi imperfecti”. According to Wollenweber 2 this genus includes 64 species, with 79 varieties and 38 forms. These have been arranged in 16 sections with 9 subsections, 12 of the sections including members for which the perfect ascomycete stage is known. This genus includes many parasites which are part of the etiological complex of interesting and economically important plant diseases. Identification and classification of the Fusaria is often difficult or impossible because when grown on artificial media they may fail to produce the characteristic structures necessary for their differentiation.
The work was begun with 2 species, F. conglutinans, incitant of cabbage yellows, and F. cubense, incitant of banana wilt. In the course of the past 5 years, as different problems of technique arose, 19 species of Fusarium have been used as inject and/or as test antigens against all the others.
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