Botrytis Species

Botrytis is a filamentous fungus isolated from decaying plants. Despite its cosmopolitan feature, it is more commonly reported from tropical and temperate areas.

No infections due to Botrytis have been reported in humans or animals. It may act as a facultative pathogen in plants and is commonly considered as a contaminant.

It grows rapidly, reaching a colony size of 3 to 9 cm in diameter, following incubation at 25°C for 7 days on potato glucose agar. The texture is woolly. The surface color is white at the beginning and becomes grey to brown in time. Dark spots may be observed on the surface of the colony. Reverse is dark [1295, 2144].

It has septate, hyaline to brown hyphae and septate, brown, large conidiophores. Conidiophores branch at their apices. These branches terminate in vesicles which bear blastoconidia on their surfaces. The blastoconidia are located on short denticles, are hyaline to brown, one-celled, and round to oval in shape. Sclerotia or zones of dense pseudoparenchymatous tissue which are resistant to unfavorable environmental conditions are frequently formed. These are visualized as dark spots on the surface of the colony. The fungus sporulates more efficently when the culture plate is kept under UV lamp intermittently during incubation [1295, 2144].

No special precautions other than general laboratory precautions are required.

No susceptibility data are available.

PubMed

GenBank

References

1295. Larone, D. H. 1995. Medically Important Fungi - A Guide to Identification, 3rd ed. ASM Press, Washington, D.C.

2144. St-Germain, G., and R. Summerbell. 1996. Identifying Filamentous Fungi - A Clinical Laboratory Handbook, 1st ed. Star Publishing Company, Belmont, California.