Phenotypic measures of the strains used in this study.

Foot and root rot severity measured with McKinney index (0–100) a and emergence b tested on durum wheat cv Claudio; number of spikes infected at 14 days above the point of inoculation [38]c ; hydrophobicity of the mycelium measured in seconds needed before absorption of a 20 µ l water dropd; millions of conidia produced in CMC medium inoculated with 103 conidia after 5 days growthe; percentage of germination of conidia after 4 hours on CMf; percentage of germinating conidia at 8 hrs (all mutants showed a delayed germination but no significant difference in the number of germinating conidia was observed)g; DON production in toxin inducing liquid medium corrected for mg of dry weight after 8 days culturingh; polygalacturonase enzyme activity measured with a diffusion assay on agarose gel (“cup plate”); measurements of pectolytic enzyme activity in diameter (mm) corrected by dry fungal biomass (mg)i. * P<0.01 by Tukey's post-hoc test.
All values are followed by SD. Significant differences compared to respective wild type are marked with an asterisk.