A first assessment of Fraxinus excelsior (common ash) susceptibility to Hymenoscyphus fraxineus (ash dieback) throughout the British Isles - PubMed (original) (raw)

A first assessment of Fraxinus excelsior (common ash) susceptibility to Hymenoscyphus fraxineus (ash dieback) throughout the British Isles

Jonathan J Stocks et al. Sci Rep. 2017.

Abstract

Ash dieback (ADB), caused by Hymenoscyphus fraxineus, has severely damaged a large proportion of ash trees (Fraxinus excelsior) in continental Europe. We have little damage data for the British Isles where the disease was found only five years ago in the Southeast, and is still spreading. A large-scale screening trial to evaluate ADB damage to provenances of F. excelsior sourced from throughout the British Isles was planted in 2013 in the southeast of England. In 2016, we scored trees by their level of ADB damage observed in field at the two worst affected (based on assessments in 2015) of the 14 sites. Significant differences were found in average ADB damage among planting sites and seed source provenances. Trees from certain provenances in Scotland were the least damaged by ADB, whereas trees from Wales and Southeast England were the most badly damaged in both trial sites. Thus the levels of ADB damage currently seen in ash populations in Southeast England may not be an accurate predictor of the damage expected in future throughout the British Isles. Given all provenances contained some healthy trees, a breeding programme to produce genetically variable native ash tree populations with lower ADB susceptibility may be feasible.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1

Figure 1

Percentage of trees in each damage score for all provenances planted at: (a) Site 16; (b) Site 35. The total number of trees from each provenance planted at each site can be found in Supporting Information Table S1.

Figure 2

Figure 2

Maps of provenance source locations showing average tree score at trial sites 16 and 35. (a) Mean scores for Site 16 (*excluding Score 0 and 1); (b) Mean scores for Site 35 (*excluding Score 0 and 1); (c) Mean scores for Site 16 (**excluding Score 0); (d) Mean scores for Site 35 (**excluding Score 0).

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