fungal communities asociated with the lenticel damage of avocado cv. Hass. Characterization of the lenticel damage of avocado cv. Hass and its associated fungal communities

The lenticel damage reduces the quality of avocado cv. Hass, leading to high fruit rejection rates and losses for the growers. The causes of this affectation are not fully understood, but mechanical stress and phytopathogens have been associated with the damage, suggesting that abiotic and biotic factors are involved. This study evaluated several aspects of the lenticel damage of avocado cv. Hass to unravel the nature of its causality. Precisely, we followed the lenticel damage in two Colombian farms for two years and found that spatiotemporal factors influence the damage as it is non-uniform and progressive. Then, we used NGS to characterize fungal communities of fruits with severe and mild injuries and found that these communities varied between farms. We also found that the damage severity influenced the composition of the fungal communities as some taxa were more common in avocados with severe damage. Finally, we isolated different fungi from necrotic lenticel to see whether we found some of these enriched taxa. Still, the isolated fungi did not coincide, showing that standard culturable techniques fail to capture the complexity of the fungal communities associated with the lenticel damage.