First Report of Epicoccum italicum Causing Postharvest Rot on Pear Fruits in Italy

In February 2025, diseased pear fruits (cvs. Max Red Bartlett and Williams) were collected during surveys in a storage facility located in Emilia-Romagna, Italy. The affected fruits had circular, brown and soft lesions covered with whitish mycelium. Pear fruits of cvs. Max Red Bartlett (A) and Williams (B) showing brown circular lesions and whitish mycelium. Diseased tissues from both cultivars were surface sterilised using 1% sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl) for 1 min and rinsed in sterile distilled water. The sterilised fragments were placed onto potato dextrose agar (PDA) and incubated at 27◦C in the dark for 7 days. The mycelium growing from the diseased tissues was aerial and floccose, with yellow pigmentation and a white margin on the upper side, while the reverse side was orange with a yellow margin. Microscopic observation of conidia showed their multicellular-phragmosporous, subglobose-pyriform struc- ture, with a brown colouration. Colony morphology and single spores of two representative isolates, DLS2379 (from cv. Max Red Bartlett) and DLS2381 (from cv. Williams), showed characteristics consistent with the description of the ascomycete Epicoccum sp. (Chen et al. 2017 ). Single-spore cultures of DLS2379 and DLS2381 were used for DNA extraction. The internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region, β-tubulin ( TUB ), and second largest subunit of nuclear RNA polymerase II ( RPB2 ) genes were amplified and sequenced with the primer pairs ITS1/ITS4 (White et al. 1990 ), Bt2a-Bt2b (Glass and Donaldson 1995 ) and 5F2/7cR (Liu et al. 1999 ), respectively. Sequences were deposited in GenBank under Accession Nos. PX470109 and PX470110 (ITS), PX552162 and PX552163 ( TUB ), and PX505262 and PX505263 ( RPB2 ) for DLS2379 and DLS2381 isolates, respectively. BLAST analysis showed that both strains DLS2379 and DLS2381 were identical to each other, and they exhibited 100% sequence identity with E. italicum ex-type strain LC 8150T for ITS (NR_158264.1), TUB (KY742341.1) and RPB2 (KY742172.1) regions. The phylogenetic tree constructed from concatenated ITS, TUB and RPB2 gene sequences of both isolates DLS2379 and DLS2381, using the maximum-likelihood method, placed isolates within the E. italicum clade, confirming the BLAST results. To fulfil Koch’s postulates, 10 detached pear fruits (cv. Williams) per isolate were surface disinfected with 1% NaOCl for 1 min and rinsed with sterile distilled water. The fruits were wounded and inoculated with a conidial suspension (10E05 conidia mL− 1 ) of DLS2379 and DLS2381. Fruits were then placed in plastic boxes to maintain high humidity (RH > 90%) and incubated in the dark under controlled conditions (22 ± 2°C). After 7 days’ incubation, inoculated pear fruits showed rot symptoms, similar to those observed initially. No symptoms occurred on the control fruits inoculated with sterile water. Epicoccum italicum was reisolated from symptomatic fruits and identified through sequencing of the ITS region. To our knowledge, this is the first report of E. italicum as a post- harvest pathogen on pear fruits worldwide. The limited current understanding of the infection biology of E. italicum during long-term pear storage, combined with the lack of commercially approved fungicides or biocontrol products for its management in Italy, highlights the significant challenge faced by growers and postharvest operators in controlling this pathogen