Sensitivity to iprodione and boscalid of Sclerotinia sclerotiorum isolates collected from rapeseed in China

Baseline sensitivity of Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, causal agent of stem rot of rapeseed, to a dicarboximide fungicide iprodione was determined using 50 isolates (historic population) collected in 2001 from the rapeseed fields without a previous history of dicarboximide usage. The 50% effective concentration (EC50) values to iprodione of these wild-type isolates ranged from 0.163 to 0.734 μg/ml with a mean of 0.428 μg/ml. In 2007 and 2008, 111 isolates (current population) were collected from rapeseed fields with 4–5 years of iprodione application. The EC50 values of these 111 isolates ranged from 0.117 to 0.634 μg/ml. The historic and current populations were not significantly (P > 0.05) different in sensitivity to iprodione. The EC50 values of these 161 isolates to a carboxamide fungicide boscalid ranged from 0.002 to 0.391 μg/ml with a mean of 0.042 μg/ml. In the laboratory, three iprodione-resistant (IR) isolates HA17-IR, SZ31-IR, and SZ45-IR were induced from wild-type isolates HA17, SZ31, and SZ45, respectively. The EC50 values of the IR isolates were 200-fold higher than those of the original wild-type parents. The IR isolates showed an increase in osmotic sensitivity. The IR isolate HA17-IR lost its ability to produce sclerotia, and showed a significantly lower virulence on rapeseed leaves than its parent isolate HA17. In contrast, the IR isolate SZ31-IR had a significantly higher virulence than its wild-type parent SZ31. PCR assays showed that the partial two-component histidine kinase (os-1) gene, which is the putative target gene of iprodione, was deleted in the low virulent IR isolate HA17-IR. DNA sequence analysis showed that each of the other two IR isolates SZ31-IR and SZ45-IR had two point mutations in their partial os-1 genes. These results indicate that the mutations in os-1 gene may be associated with dicarboximide sensitivity, sclerotial development, and virulence in S. sclerotiorum.