Pathogenicity, Morpho-Species and Mating Types of Alternaria spp. causing Alternaria blight in Pistacia spp. in Turkey Hilal Ozkilinc & Kamil Sarpkaya & Sener Kurt & Canan Can & Hatice Polatbilek & Aysegul Yasar & Unal Sevinc & Aysun Uysal & Fatma Konukoglu Received: 20 June 2017 /Accepted: 25 October 2017 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2017 Abstract Alternaria genus includes many plant patho- gens on numerous hosts, causing leaf spots, rots and blights. Alternaria blight has been observed as one of the important fungal diseases of pistachio (Pistacia vera L.) as well as its wild relatives (P. terebinthus, P. lentiscus, P. khinjuk, P. atlantica, P. mutica) in Turkey. Alternaria species were sampled from Pistacia spp. hosts from dif- ferent geographic regions in Turkey during field trips in late spring to early fall of 2013. Alternaria blight symptoms were observed mainly on fruits and rarely on leaves. Four hundred and twenty two of the isolates were morpholog- ically defined as A. alternata , A. tenuissima , A. arborescens and also intermediate morpho-species be- tween A. alternata/A. arborescens. Pathogenicity of the isolates was confirmed with host inoculations on detached fruits. Mating types of 270 isolates of Alternaria spp. from the collection were identified using a PCR-based mating type assay that amplifies either a MAT1-1 or a MAT1-2 fragment from the mating locus. Although a strongly clonal population structure was expected due to the puta- tive asexual reproduction of these fungi, both idiomorphs were detected at equal frequencies at several different spatial scales. The distribution of mating types within each geographic region, within host species as well as in overall collection was not significantly different from 1:1. Ampli- fied fragments of partial idiomorph sequences were ob- tained for representative isolates. Parsimony trees were depicted based on sequence data of mating type genes for these representative isolates as well as some other Alternaria species obtained by Genebank. Several point mutations presented a few clusters which are supported by high bootsrapped values. The Alternaria blight disease agents both from cultivated and wild hosts were pathogen- ic on pistachio which may cause difficulties to control the disease because of extensity of pathogen sources. Besides, equal mating type distribution of the pathogen at both geographic and host species levels suggests a potential for sexual reproduction of Alternaria spp. in Turkey. Keywords Alternaria . Mating type . Pistachio . Alternaria blight . Pathogenicity Introduction Turkey is one of the centers of origin of pistachio (Pistacia vera L.) and many wild relatives (Pistacia spp.) grow sympatrically with cultivated pistachio in Phytoparasitica https://doi.org/10.1007/s12600-017-0624-8 Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12600-017-0624-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. H. Ozkilinc (*) : U. Sevinc Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Canakkale, Turkey e-mail: hilalozkilinc@comu.edu.tr K. Sarpkaya : F. Konukoglu Pistachio Research Institute, Gaziantep, Turkey S. Kurt : A. Uysal Department of Plant Protection, Mustafa Kemal University, Hatay, Turkey C. Can : H. Polatbilek : A. Yasar Department of Biology, Gaziantep University, Gaziantep, Turkey