Revisiting Cercospora mirabilis from the Perspective of Morphology and Multi-loci Phylogeny

Cercospora mirabilis was first described in 1917 as a leaf-spot fungus on Mirabilis jalapa from the USA. Despite global distribution of plant, this fungus has only been recorded in six countries, including Korea. Although the genus Cercospora was recently revised using advanced molecular phylogenetic approaches, C. mirabilis was not included in that study. Moreover, no validated cultures of this fungus were found in any known authentic culture collection. Therefore, nucleotide sequences for taxonomic purposes and information regarding its phylogeny are lacking. To fill these gaps, six samples demonstrating leaf spot symptoms on M. jalapa were collected from various parts of Korea and examined for morphological and molecular phylogenetic characterization of C. mirabilis. Two newly obtained monoconidial isolates were deposited in an authentic culture collection in Korea. This study provides the molecular phylogeny of C. mirabilis based on multigene sequence analyses, confirming that it is a distinct species within the genus Cercospora.