Cronartium conigenum

The life cycle of a species consists of four stages. The stages of spermogony and acidosis parasitize pines , the cones of the affected plants are sterile, larger than in healthy plants. They are covered with bright orange irregularly-hemispherical thin peridiums , from which the eciospores are ejected. These spores germinate, hitting the leaves of various beech (both evergreen and deciduous) in the uredinium stage. Urediniospores, which appear in summer, germinate into several more successive generations of uredinia, before late autumn from disputes of all generations (80-300 days after the first sporulation of uredinia, depending on the time of infection of the tree), telia stage mushrooms germinate, also on beech leaves . This stage is capable of enduring winters, and in the spring it forms the teletiospores infecting pines. It is easiest for a teleteospore to penetrate young female strobila ^[1] .

Host Plants

Intermediate hosts (hosts of spermogony and etsidia stages) are various species of the genus Pine from the west and south-west of North America and from Central America:

• Pinus cubensis griseb.
• Pinus engelmannii Carrière
• Pinus leiophylla Schiede ex Schltdl. & Cham.
• Pinus caribaea Morelet
• Pinus maximinoi hemoore
• Pinus montezumae Lamb.
• Pinus monticola Douglas ex D.Don
• Pinus oocarpa Schiede ex Schltdl.
• Pinus ponderosa P.Lawson & C.Lawson
• Pinus pseudostrobus Lindl.

The main hosts (hosts of uredinia and telium stages) are mainly oak species ^{[2] [3]} :

• Quercus alba L.
• Quercus arizonica Sarg.
• Quercus chrysolepis Liebm.
• Quercus coccinea Münchh.
• Quercus douglasii Hook. & Arn.
• Quercus emoryi Torr.
• Quercus grisea Liebm.
• Quercus hypoleucoides A.Camus
• Quercus macrocarpa Michx.
• Quercus montana willd.
• Quercus oblongifolia Torr.
• Quercus oocarpa Liebm.
• Quercus palmeri Engelm.
• Quercus peduncularis Née
• Quercus robur L.
• Quercus rubra L.
• Quercus rugosa nee

and other, as well as, occasionally, types of chestnut and castanopsis, and lithocarpus densely flowered ^[4] .

In April 1932, American botanist Arthur Hinkley and phytopathologist Leslie Newton Gooding on infected cones Pinus leiophylla var. chihuahuana (Engelm.) An anamorphic fungus Fusarium bactridioides Wollenw was found in the mountains of Chirikaua in southwestern Arizona . 1934 . Hans Wilhelm Wallenweber , who first described it in 1934 in an article in the journal Science , in the same article gave a description of, perhaps the first in the history of a deliberate experiment on the biological control of one fungus through the spread of another.

In July 1932, conidia of the Fusarium were sprayed on the galls of the Cronartium conigenum , which struck the cones of Pinus monticola in Oregon. A year later, all the Gauls were dead. A similar experiment was also performed on the rust fungi Cronartium harknessii and Cronartium filamentosum on Pinus contorta . A few months later, they showed sporulation of Fusarium, however, if the Kronarcium died next year, it was not reported.

After 1935, no later finds of Fusarium bactridioides were reported ^[5] .

Despite the important economic importance of Cronartium conigenum (this species is not specific to a particular host, capable of striking numerous species of pine), the scientific literature about it contains almost exclusively descriptions of the extent of damage to pine cones in certain geographic regions. Morphological descriptions are very scarce, accurate information about the species range is also not given ^[4] .

Cronartium conigenum is one of the few parasitic plant pathogens that are edible fungi . Large, affected by this mushroom cones sweetish taste, in Mexico, they are sometimes eaten ^[6] . The same effect has a corn smut ( Ustilago maydis ), making the corn cobs sweeter. Cobs infected with a bump are eaten in Mexico in large quantities in fresh and canned form. Also used are edible rice Ustilago esculenta , smut sorghum Sporisorium cruentum and chytridyomycete - the pathogen of winged beans Synchytrium psophocarpi . Hypomyces lactifluorum , a pathogen of other fungi and lacticles , is also common in food in North and Central America ^[7] .

In North America, another species is known that forms etsii on pine cones:

• Cronartium strobilinum Hedgc. & G.Hahn , 1922 strikes the cones of Pinus elliottii Engelm. and Pinus palustris Mill. in the southeastern United States. It is distinguished by a less developed percyium, immersed in a substrate (lump) and not forming a dense coating on it ^[3] .

The species was first described by a French mycologist, a researcher of fungi of Latin America, Narcis Teofil Patuiar (1854–1926) in 1896 in the 10th issue of the Journal de Botanique , edited by Louis Moreau in Paris. Patuyar attributed it to the genus Caeoma Link , 1809 ( lectotyping is a homotypical synonym for the collective genus Aecidium Pers. , 1796 ), since he knew only the echidian stage of the fungus, which affects pine cones ^[8] . Later, American mycologists George Grant Hedgecock and Nicholas Rex Hunt discovered two other stages of the fungal life cycle, which allowed them in 1922 in an article in the journal Phytopatology to transfer it to the genus Cronartium Fr. 1815 ^[9] .

The synonym Cronartium conigenum includes the following names:

• Caeoma conigenum Pat., 1896 basionym
• Peridermium conigenum (Pat.) RSPeterson , 1967