Determination of sunflower (Helianthus annuus) ve soybean (Glycine max) variety reactions to macrophomina phaseolina and characterization of the agent

Macrophomina phaseolina is a polyphagous phytopathogenic fungus and it can cause serious yield losses on economically important crop plants and the most appropriate control measure is utilization of resistance sources. To achieve this, an efficient, fast, and reliable screening method is prerequisite. The aim of this study was to apply widely used inoculation methods and test effect of inoculum maturity on disease development under fully controlled conditions and to define the phylogenetic analysis of M. phaseolina population collected from maize, sunflower and soybean. Fastest disease development on sunflower was observed for cut-stem and stem-tape inoculation methods applied using young hyphal inoculum and both applications had high repeatability rate. However, cut-stem can be applied only for pathogenicity studies due to high predisposition of sunflower seedlings after application of cut-stem inoculation method while opposite situation was observed for stem-tape inoculation method. Cut-stem inoculation technique was proven to be repeatable method for pathogenicity and variety reactions studies on soybean. The 11 TR 077 variety was found moderately resistant among sunflower cultivars tested and no complete resistance was observed for soybean varieties. phylogenetic analysis of ITS region formed 3 clusters with 1 cluster containing only sunflower originated isolates, 1 cluster containing only maize originated isolates and 1 cluster comprised of soybean and maize isolates.