Screening of Existing and New Boxwood Cultivars for Disease Resistance and In Vitro Fungicide Screening to Manage Boxwood Dieback Caused by Colletotrichum theobromicola

Abstract

Boxwood is one of the most common and widely planted perennial ornamentals in both home gardens and commercial landscapes. Recently reported boxwood dieback, a fungal disease caused by Colletotrichum theobromicola, has been spreading at an alarming rate within the U.S. Boxwood breeders, nursery growers, and landscape professionals have shown great concerns regarding the lack of effective management practices. Therefore, the primary objectives of this study were to devise effective disease management strategies including screening cultivars to determine their susceptibility to boxwood dieback and screening various fungicides to determine their effectiveness in managing the disease. Host range studies were conducted by screening a wide variety of boxwood cultivars under greenhouse conditions. Although, boxwood cultivar ‘Little Missy’ showed much delayed symptom expression as compared to rest of the cultivars but none of the 11 cultivars were found to be resistance to boxwood dieback. In vitro screening of nine fungicides was conducted to determine mycelial growth as well as spore germination inhibition of eight isolates of C. theobromicola collected from eight states in the U.S. Of the nine fungicides, difenoconazole+pydiflumetofen showed maximum mycelial growth and spore germination inhibition at 1 ppm active ingredient followed by fluxapyroxad+pyraclostrobin, and pyraclostrobin+boscalid at 5 ppm active ingredient. Azoxystrobin+benzovindiflupyr significantly inhibited mycelial growth at 1 ppm but reduced spore germination at 10 ppm active ingredient. This study provides the boxwood industry professionals with critical and applied information pertaining to host susceptibility and fungicide efficacy to effectively mitigate boxwood dieback and to reduce its further spread.