First Report of Waitea circinata var. circinata Causing Brown Ring Patch on Poa trivialis in California

Rough bluegrass (Poa trivialis L.) is a C3 (cool-season) turfgrass used on golf course putting greens. It is often used to overseed C4 (warm-season) turf for fall through early-summer use. In March 2007, at maximium daytime air temperatures of approximately 30 to 35°C, irregular, thin, yellow rings approximately 10 to 20 cm in diameter were reported on P. trivialis in putting greens from two golf courses in the Coachella Valley of southern California. Affected plants had a blight of the leaves and stems and a rot of the crown, with initial symptoms being a yellowing of the tissue followed by the development of a dark, water-soaked appearance of the whole plant. Plants turned reddish brown as the water-soaked tissue dessicated. A Rhizoctonia-like fungus was found to be colonizing the leaves, stems, and upper roots and thatch. Three isolates were obtained from the diseased turf samples. All were identified as Waitea circinata var. circinata based on colony morphology (2) and rDNA internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region sequences (1). The sequences of the three isolates were more than 99% similar to those of W. circinata var. circinata deposited in the NCBI database (1,2). To confirm pathogenicity, each isolate was inoculated onto 4-week-old P. trivialis (2 mg of seed per cm2) grown in 10-cm-diameter pots containing steam-sterilized UC-mix at 28°C. Five 8-mm-diameter plugs of each isolate were taken from 7-day-old cultures grown on potato dextrose agar (PDA) and placed in direct contact with the bases of the stems. The pots were then incubated in a moist chamber at 28°C. Five noncolonized PDA plugs were used as a negative control. Three pots were used for each of the three isolates and the check treatment. For all isolates, chlorosis of leaf and stems were observed 5 days after inoculation and the tissue appeared water soaked after 7 days with the production of abundant aerial mycelia being observed. All plants, except the negative controls, died after 10 days. W. circinata var. circinata was reisolated from symptomatic tissue from the inoculated plants. W. circinata var. circinata was previously reported as the causal agent of brown ring patch on creeping bentgrass (Agrostis palustris) in Japan (2) and as a pathogen of annual bluegrass (P. annua) in the United States (1). To our knowledge, this is the first report of W. circinata var. circinata infecting P. trivialis in California. References: (1) K. de la Cerda et al. Plant Dis. 91:791, 2007. (2) T. Toda et al. Plant Dis. 89:536, 2005.