Heritability of Response to Inoculation by Pine Pitch Canker of Seedlings of Radiata Pine (Report‪)‬

Introduction Pitch canker, caused by the ascomycete fungus Fusarium circinatum (synonym = Fusarium subglutinans (Wollenw. and Reinking) Nelson, Toussoun and Marasas f. sp. pini (Correll et al. 1991)), causes a die-back disease of pines and Douglas-fir. Infection of mature trees by the fungus causes a resinous canker from which pitch flows (Gordon et al. 2001). The bark is retained but the wood beneath is deeply resin-soaked. The fungus also causes mortality in bare-root nurseries (Gordon et al. 2001). Pitch canker was first described in the south-eastern states of USA in 1946 (Hepting and Roth 1946) but has been identified in other regions of the world, including Haiti, Mexico, South Africa, Spain (Dwinell 1999) and most recently Chile (Wingfield et al. 2002). Pitch canker is known to infect many pine species (Hodge and Dvorak 2000; Gordon et al. 2001) as well as Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii--Vogler et al. 2004), and species differ in their response.