Lachnellula arida Genome sequencing and assembly for the development of diagnostic species identification markers.. Lachnellula arida strain:CBS 203.66

The filamentous ascomycete fungus Lachnellula willkommii is the causal agent of European Larch Canker (ELC), which is considered to be one of the most destructive diseases of larch in Europe. L. willkommii was first detected in North America in 1927 on a plantation of European Larch (L. decidua) planted years earlier from infected nursery stock imported from Great Britain. After decades of sanitation practices eliminating the pathogen from the area, the fungus has reappeared in coastal areas of the United States and Canada. L. willkommii is under official control in Canada and is considered a quarantine pest in Canada and the United States. There is concern that ELC could spread throughout the range of eastern larch, which is a transcontinental species typical of the Boreal forest which spans the landscape from the Atlantic Provinces of Canada in the east to Alaska in the northwest of North America. Current methods to detect Lachnellula species on plant samples rely primarily on identification based on biological and morphological characteristics, however, misdeterminations between the pathogenic L. willkommii species from non-pathogenic saprophytic sister species are frequent as the fungus does not always produce the structures which would allow positive identification. Whole genome sequencing technologies were used to obtain the draft genome sequences of L. willkommii and six other closely-related sister species for the purpose of generating molecular markers which may be used as a diagnostic tool to detect and distinguish this regulated pest from non-pathogenic sister species that are currently indistinguishable using existing diagnostic methods.