Morphological and physiological characteristics of dicarboximide‐sensitive and resistant isolates of Botrytis cinerea1

Various morphological and physiological characteristics, such as mycelial colour and appearance, mycelial growth rates, sporulation, pathogenicity on different hosts, activity of cell-wall degrading enzymes, competitive ability and osmotic sensitivity of five dicarboximide-resistant isolates of Botrytis cinerea were compared to those of their sensitive parent strains. There were only small reductions in mycelial growth rates of resistant strains as compared to the sensitive ones, whereas all of them showed greatly reduced rates of sporulation. With only one exception, the pathogenicity of the resistant isolates was reduced by varying extents compared with the sensitive parent strains. While the proteolytic activity of resistant strains tended to be higher, the activities of peclolytic enzymes were often lower than those of the sensitive isolates. In competition tests, resistant conidia often completely disappeared after a few passages on untreated plants. In only one of the resistant isolates tested so far was dicarboximide resistance related to a high osmotic sensitivity.