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04/17/2018 | Pressemitteilung

Recently discovered mushroom named after Witzenhausen

Plant scientists at the University of Kassel have discovered two new species of fungi. They named one of the two new species after Witzenhausen, home of the university's agricultural science department. The two fungi live in host plants and have a growth-promoting effect on certain of these plants.

Image: University of Kassel
Figure A: Infected hibiscus; Figure B: Plant tissue infected by the fungus; Figure C: F. witzenhausenense on malt extract agar (top and bottom views).

They are two new species of the Fusarium solani group, a form of microfungi that live in the tissue of host plants. Prof. Dr. Maria Finckh, head of the Department of Ecological Plant Protection at the University of Kassel, and her doctoral student at the time, Adnan Sisic, discovered one of the species in a compost; they christened the new discovery Fusarium stercicola. They discovered the second species in the stem of a hibiscus plant and named it Fusarium witzenhausenense after where they found it. 

 

In further investigations, the scientists found that while the fungi had a negative effect on the growth of some host plants, they had a favorable effect on other plants, such as earth clover.

The molecular identification of the new species was carried out in collaboration with an international team of colleagues from the Biodiversity Institute Utrecht, the Netherlands. The finding and the results of the analysis were recently published in the journal "Antonie van Leeuwenhoek".

Link to original article: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10482-018-1068-y
 

 

Contact:

Prof. Dr. Maria Finckh
University of Kassel
Department of Ecological Plant Protection
Tel.: +49 561 804-1562
E-mail: mfinckh@uni-kassel.de