Chemotyping of Fusarium graninearum from durum wheat in an area of Emilia Romagna.

Fusarium graminearum is one of the main causal agents of fusarium head blight (FHB) of wheat. F. graminearum population can be divided into two chemotypes based on the production of the trichothecenes deoxynivalenol (DON) and nivalenol (NIV). DON-producing isolates can be further distinguished on the basis of the predominant acetyl DON derivative that produce: 3-acetyl DON (3-AcDON) or 15-acetyl DON (15-AcDON). In this investigation, the isolates, collected between 2006 and 2007 from symptomatic spikes of durum wheat in several fields located in North of Italy, around Bologna (Emilia-Romagna region), were tested with a multiplex version of the chemotype-specific PCR proposed by Ward et al., 2002. We observed, during our studies, all the three chemotypes in particular 79% of the 66 isolates belonged to the 15-AcDON chemotype, 15 % to the 3-AcDON and 6% to NIV. 15-AcDON chemotype was the most representative. This is the first time that a population of F. graminearum, exclusively isolated from durum wheat from the area under investigation, was examined for chemotype. Taking into consideration the variability of Italian environmental characteristics, it is interesting to monitore fields from all over the country, especially where the durum wheat is more cultivated, to better understand the distribution of the chemotypes in Italy.