First Report of Neodeightonia phoenicum Causing Black Scorch and Rot Disease on Date Palms in Arizona

Phoenix dactylifera L. is an economically and aesthetically important tree in the southwestern US. Approximately 4900 ha of dates are commercially grown for its edible fruit in the US, including about 1600 ha in the Yuma area and the Hyder Valley of Arizona (USDA, 2023). In October 2022, a severe rot was observed on three date palms in the Phoenix Metropolitan area. Early symptoms were brown spots that turned to a black scorch appearance extending along the leaf base and rachis, leading to the lower fronds' wilting, drying, and folding. As the disease progressed upwards, the terminal bud became necrotic and eventually collapsed. Isolation from the necrotic leaf lesions on a potato dextrose agar (PDA) consistently yielded a fast-growing fungus that was initially white with abundant fluffy aerial mycelium, which gradually turned dark olivaceous after growing at 22-25oC under 12 h light for a week. Pycnidial conidiomata formed on pine needles in a water agar were black and globose. Conidiogenous cells were hyaline and cylindrical. The conidia exhibited a thick-walled, ovoid to ellipsoid morphology, initially appearing hyaline and aseptate and transitioned to 1-septate with a dark brown, striated appearance, measuring 19.6 to 23.0 μm x 10.3 to 12.2 µm (n = 20). For molecular identification, genomic DNA was extracted from the mycelia of two isolates. Partial DNA sequences of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region of rDNA and β-tubulin (TUB) gene were amplified and sequenced using primers ITS5/ITS4 (White et al. 1990) and Bt2a/Bt2b (Glass and Donaldson 1995). The resulting sequences of ITS (PP346666) and TUB (PP372690) were deposited in the GenBank. A BLASTn search of ITS and TUB sequences revealed a 99 to 100% similarity with the sequences (JX456475, KF766198, and OK338070) of Neodeightonia phoenicum strains causing palm rot in Greece (Ligoxigakis et al. 2013), leaf spot on pygmy date palm in China (Zhang and Song 2022), and an ex-type CBS 122528 culture. Based on these morphological and molecular data, the fungus was identified as N. phoenicum. A pathogenicity test was conducted twice in a greenhouse (daily temperatures:18 ~ 30 oC, relative humidity: 45% ~ 95%) on 4 healthy 1-year-old date palm plants. The petioles of 3 older leaves per plant were wounded by pricking the epidermis of the leaf with a needle (ca 20 pricks per petiole) and inoculated with agar discs from a 4-day-old PDA culture of the fungus. The control consisted of 4 mock-inoculated plants by placing plain PDA on the wounds of leaf petioles. Five weeks after inoculation, all the inoculated leaves showed symptoms of black scorch, petiole rot, and leaf necrosis, which were the same as those symptoms observed on the original diseased trees, while the controls did not show any symptoms. The fungus was re-isolated and confirmed as N. phoenicum by morphology. N. phoenicum has been reported to cause leaf spot, shoots blights, stalk and root rots as well as black scorch on different palm species all over the world. However, to our knowledge, this is the first report of N. phoenicum causing black scorch and rot disease in Arizona. The possible spread of N. phoenicum could have a significant economic impact and requires immediate attention through suitable disease management initiatives.