Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Morphological and molecular characterization of downy mildew on sweet basil (Ocimum basilicum) caused by Peronospora belbahrii in Turkiye

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Molecular Biology Reports Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Background

Sweet basil (Ocimum basilicum) is one of the most significant aromatic plants in Turkiye. Recently, a new pathogen induced symptoms were discovered and identified as basil downy mildew caused by Peronospora belbahrii Thines. The pathogen has been introduced into the country and it has quickly become the most damaging disease in basil cultivation. The purpose of this study was to investigate the molecular and morphological properties of the causal organism of downy mildew observed on sweet basil and determine the disease incidence and prevalence in Antalya province.

Methods and results

According to morphological characteristics (conidia, conidiophores) disease was determined as downy mildew caused by P. belbahrii. Pathogenicity tests were performed by spraying with a sporangial suspension of P. belbahrii (1 × 105 sporangia/mL). After 1 week, all inoculated plants exhibited characteristic downy mildew symptoms on their leaves, whereas non-inoculated control plants remained disease-free. All molecular analyses involving the internal transcribed spacer region were amplified using Nested PCR with primer pairs ITS4 and ITS6 for the first round and ITS4 and DC6 for the second round. Resulting sequences of all the nested PCR products had 99% similarity with P. belbahrii isolates. Disease incidence was 22.4–70.2% of sweet basil cultivation area in Antalya province.

Conclusions

Based on the molecular analysis, morphological characteristics and pathogenicity tests the pathogen was identified as P. belbahrii. To our knowledge, this is the first report of downy mildew caused by P. belbahrii on sweet basil in Turkiye.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Mahmoudı D, Shekarı F, Afsahı K, Malekı A (2022) Evaluation of the responses of basil to the application of salicylic acid and gibberellic acid. Zemdirbyste-Agriculture 109(2):131–138

    Google Scholar 

  2. McGrath S, Zhang RN, Raid L, Ma R, Wick L, Guo Madeiras A (2015) Basil downy mildew (Peronospora belbahrii): discoveries and challenges relative to its control. Phytopathology 105(7):885–894

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  3. Roberts PD, Raid RN, Harmon PF, Jordan SA, Palmateer AJ (2009) First report of downy mildew caused by a Peronospora sp. on basil in Florida and the United States. Plant Dis 93:199

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Thines M, Telle S, Ploch S, Runge F (2009) Identity of the downy mildew pathogens of basil, coleus, and sage with implications for quarantine measures. Mycol Res 113:532–540

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  5. Belbahri L, Calmin G, Pawlowski J, Lefort F (2005) Phylogenetic analysis and real time PCR detection of a presumably undescribed Peronospora species on sweet basil and sage. Mycol Res 109:1276–1287

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  6. Garibaldi A, Minuto A, Gullino ML (2005) First report of downy mildew caused by Peronospora sp. on basil (Ocimum basilicum) in France. Plant Dis 89:683

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  7. Garibaldi A, Minuto A, Minuto G, Gullino ML (2004) First report of downy mildew on basil (Ocimum basilicum) in Italy. Plant Dis 88:312

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  8. Hansford CG (1933) Annual report of the mycologist. Rev Appl Mycol 12:421–422

    Google Scholar 

  9. Khateri H, Calmin G, Moarrefzadeh N, Belbahri L, Lefort F (2007) First report of downy mildew caused by Peronospora sp. on basil in northern Iran. J Plant Pathol 89:S70

    Google Scholar 

  10. McLeod CAS, Mostert L (2006) First report of a Peronospora species on sweet basil in South Africa. Plant Dis 90:1115

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  11. Ronco L, RollánC, Choi YJ, Shin HD (2008) Downy mildew of sweet basil (Ocimum basilicum) caused by Peronospora sp. in Argentina. BSPP new disease reports.

  12. Nagy G, Horvath A (2011) Occurrence of downy mildew caused by Peronospora belbahrii on sweet basil in Hungary. Plant Dis 95:1034

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  13. Wyenandt CA, Simon JE, Mcgrath MT, Ward L (2010) Susceptibility of basil cultivars and breeding lines to downy mildew (Peronospora belbahrii). HortScience 45:1416–1419

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Garibaldi A, Bertetti D, Gullino ML (2007) Effect of leaf wetness duration and temperature on infection of downy mildew (Peronospora sp.) of basil. J Plant Dis Prot 114:6–8

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Spencer DM (ed) (1981) The downy mildews. Academic Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  16. Standish JR, Góngora-Castillo E, Bowman MJ, Childs KL, Tian M, Quesada-Ocamp LM (2022) Development, validation, and utility of species-specific diagnostic markers for detection of peronospora belbahrii. Phytopathol 112:8. https://doi.org/10.1094/PHYTO-09-21-0393-R

  17. Homa K, Barney WP, Ward DL, Wyenandt CA, Simon JE (2014) Evaluation of fungicides for the control of Peronospora belbahrii on sweet basil in New Jersey. Plant Dis 98:1561–1566

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  18. Shao D, Tian M (2018) A qPCR approach to quantify the growth of basil downy mildew pathogen Peronospora belbahrii during infection. Curr Plant Biol 15:2–7

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Kumar S, Stecher G, Tamura K (2016) MEGA7: molecular evolutionary genetics analysis version 7.0 for bigger datasets. Mol Biol Evol 33:1870–1874

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  20. Doyle JJ (1990) Isolation of plant DNA from fresh tissue. Focus 12:13–15

    Google Scholar 

  21. Cooke DEL, Drenth A, Duncan JM, Wagels G, Brasier CM (2000) A molecular phylogeny of Phytophthora and related oomycetes. Fungal Genet Biol 30:17–32

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  22. Bonants P, de Weerdt MH, van Gent Pelzer M, Lacourt I, Cooke D, Duncan J (1997) Detection and identification of Phytophthora fragariae Hickman by the polymerase chain reaction. Eur J Plant Pathol 103:345–355

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  23. Farahani-Kofoet RD, Roemer P, Grosch R (2012) Systemic spread of downy mildew in basil plants and detection of the pathogen in seed and plant samples. Mycol Prog 11:961–966

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Wyenandt CA, Simon JE, Pyne RM, Homa K, McGrath MT, Zhang S, Raid RN, Ma LJ, Wick R, Guo L, Madeiras A (2015) Basil downy mildew (Peronospora belbahrii) discoveries and challenges relative to its control. Phytopathology 105:885–894

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  25. Falach-Block L, Ben-Naim Y, Cohen Y (2019) Investigation of seed transmission in Peronospora belbahrii the causal agent of basil downy mildew. Agronomy 4:205–216

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Riley EA (1960) A revised lit of plant diseases in Tanganyika Territory. Mycol Pap 75:1–42

    Google Scholar 

  27. Coosemans J (2004) First report of Peronospora laii, downy mildew on basil (Ocimum basilicum) in Belgium. Parasitica 60:27

    Google Scholar 

  28. Porta-Puglia A, Mifsud D (2006) First record of downy mildew caused by Peronospora sp. on basil in Malta. J Plant Pathol 88:121–125

    Google Scholar 

  29. Voglmayr H, Piatek J (2009) Peronospora causing downy mildew disease of sweet basil newly reported in Cameroon. Plant Atol 58:805

    Google Scholar 

  30. Blomquist CL, Rooney-Latham S, Nolan PA (2009) First report of downy mildew on field-grown sweet basil caused by Peronospora sp. in San Diego country, California. Plant Dis 93:968

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  31. Wick RL, Brazee NJ (2009) First report of downy mildew caused by a Peronospora species on sweet basil (Ocimum basilicum) in Massachusetts. Plant Dis 93:318

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  32. Chen CH, Huang JH, Hsieh TF (2010) First report of Peronospora belbahrii causing downy mildew on basil. Plant Pathol Bull 19:177–180

    Google Scholar 

  33. Martinez de la Parte E, Perez-Vicente L, Bernal B, Garcia D (2010) First report of Peronospora sp. on sweet basil (Ocimum basilicum) in Cuba. Plant Pathol 59:800

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Cohen Y, Vaknin M, Ben-Naim Y, Rubin AE, Galperin M, Silverman D, Bitton S, Adler U (2013) First report of the occurence and resistance to mefenoxam of Peronospora belbahrii, causal agent of downy mildew of basil (Ocimum basilicum) in Israel. Plant Dis 97:692

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  35. Saude C, Westerveld S, Filotas M, McDonald MR (2013) First report of downy mildew caused by Peronospora belbahrii on basil (Ocimum spp.) in Ontario. Plant Dis 97:1248

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  36. Hilal AA, Ghebrial EW (2014) Occurrence of downy mildew (Peronospora belbahrii) of sweet basil (Ocimum basilicum L.) in Egypt. Egypt J Phytopathol 42(2):197–198

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Kanetis L, Vasiliou A, Neophytou G, Samouel S, Tsaltas D (2014) First report of downy mildew caused by Peronospora belbahrii on sweet basil (Ocimum basilicum) in Cyprus. Plant Dis 98:283

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  38. Petrzelova I, Kitner M, Dolezalova I, Ondrej V, Lebeda A (2015) First report of basil downy mildew caused by Peronospora belbahrii in the Czech Republic. Plant Dis 99:418

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  39. Choi YJ, Choi IY, Lee KJ, Shin HD (2016) First report of downy mildew caused by Peronospora belbahrii on sweet basil (Ocimum basilicum) in Korea. Plant Dis 100:2335

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Yadav SS, Priyanka S, Indrajeet N, Soumya S (2021) First report of downy mildew on sweet basil caused by Peronospora belbahrii in India. Plant Dis. https://doi.org/10.1094/PDIS-03-21-0621-PDN

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  41. Danielsen S, Jacobsen SE, Echegaray SE, Ames T (2000) Impact of downy mildew on the yield of quinoa. CIP program report 1999–2000. 397–401

  42. Omer C, Nisan Z, Rav-David D, Elad Y (2021) Effects of agronomic practices on the severity of sweet basil downy mildew (Peronospora belbahrii). Plants 10:907

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

Download references

Funding

The author declares that no funds, grants, or other support were received during the preparation of this manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Biological Control Research Institute, Adana, Turkey

    Hale Gunacti

Authors
  1. Hale Gunacti
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

Author read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hale Gunacti.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The author declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Ethical approval

This is an observational study. The XYZ Research Ethics Committee has confirmed that no ethical approval is required.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Gunacti, H. Morphological and molecular characterization of downy mildew on sweet basil (Ocimum basilicum) caused by Peronospora belbahrii in Turkiye. Mol Biol Rep 50, 2343–2349 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11033-022-08218-y

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11033-022-08218-y

Keywords

Search

Navigation