Neomassaria coffeae L. Lu & Tibpromma, 2025

Lu, Li, Karunarathna, Samantha C., Rajeshkumar, Kunhiraman C., Elgorban, Abdallah M., Jayawardena, Ruvishika S., Hongsanan, Sinang, Suwannarach, Nakarin, Kumla, Jaturong, Xiong, Yin-Ru, Hyde, Kevin D., Han, Mei-Yan, Zheng, De-Ge, Li, Qiang, Dai, Dong-Qin & Tibpromma, Saowaluck, 2025, Unveiling fungal diversity associated with coffee trees in China using a polyphasic approach and a global review of coffee saprobic fungi, IMA Fungus 16, pp. e 144874-e 144874 : e144874-

Neomassaria coffeae L. Lu & Tibpromma sp. nov.

Fig. 14

Etymology.

The species epithet “ coffeae ” refers to the host plant genus “ Coffea ” from which the fungus was isolated.

Diagnosis.

Differs from N. fabacearum by having guttulate ascospores with mucilaginous sheath and textura prismatica peridium.

Holotype.

HKAS 137608 .

Description.

Saprobic on a decaying branch of C. arabica . Teleomorph: Ascomata 150–220 µm high × 150–250 µm diam. (x- = 191 × 210 µm, n = 15), solitary to gregarious, semi-immersed to immersed, coriaceous, visible as black dots on the substrate, unilocular, globose or subglobose, ostioles central. Peridium 10–20 µm wide (x- = 14 µm, n = 15), outer walls comprising 3–4 layers of textura prismatica cells, brown to dark brown, inner walls thin, hyaline and density. Hamathecium 1.5–2.5 µm wide (x- = 2 µm, n = 20), hyaline, filiform, septate, branched, cellular, numerous pseudoparaphyses. Asci 80–110 × 10–15 µm (x- = 93 × 13 µm, n = 20), 8 - spored, bitunicate, fissitunicate, oblong to cylindrical, straight, sometimes with short pedicellate, with ocular chamber. Ascospores 15–18 × 5–7 µm (x- = 16.5 × 5.6 µm, n = 30), uniseriate to biseriate, hyaline, yellowish when mature, ellipsoid to broadly fusiform, 1 - septate in the middle, constricted at the septum, guttulate, surrounded by mucilaginous sheath observed clearly when mature. Anamorph: Not observed.

Culture characteristics.

Ascospore germinating within 24 h on PDA. Colonies reached 4 cm in diameter after two months at 25 ° C. Colonies obverse: circular, flat to slightly raised, fluffy, with filiform margin, white; reverse: brown in centre with yellowish to white edges.

Materials examined.

China, Yunnan Province, Baoshan , on a decaying branch of Coffea arabica ( Rubiaceae ) (24°9'N, 98°8'E, 1210 m alt.), 30 July 2022, LiLu, BS 2 - C 19 ( HKAS 137608 , holotype), isotype MHZU 23-0066 , ex-type living culture KUNCC 24-18349 = KUNCC 24-18350 , ex-isotype living culture ZHKUCC 23-0642 = ZHKUCC 23-0643 .

Notes.

According to the multi-gene phylogeny, Neomassaria coffeae forms a sister lineage to N. fabacearum (Fig. 15 ). Morphologically, N. coffeae can be distinguished from N. fabacearum by having guttulate ascospores with mucilaginous sheath and textura prismatica peridium (Fig. 14 ; Hyde et al. (2016)). Based on nucleotide comparisons, N. coffeae ( ZHKUCC 23-0642 ) is different from the type species N. fabacearum ( MFLU 16-1875 ) by 18 / 883 bp (2 %, without gaps) of the LSU, 5 / 868 bp (0.6 %, without gaps) of the SSU and 46 / 843 bp (5.5 %, without gaps) of the TEF 1 - α. In addition, the PHI test results (Fig. 22 g ) revealed no significant recombination relationships between N. coffeae and its phylogenetically related taxa. Therefore, based on morphological characteristics and phylogenetic analyses, we introduce our strains as a new species, N. coffeae .

Figures

Figure 14. Neomassaria coffeae (HKAS 137608, holotype). A, B ascomata on a decaying branch of C. arabica; C longitudinal section of an ascoma; D peridium wall; E pseudoparaphyses; F – J asci; K germinated ascospore; L – P ascospores; Q an ascospore stained with Indian ink; R culture on PDA from obverse and reverse. Scale bars: 50 μm (C); 10 μm (D, E, L – Q); 20 μm (F – K).

Figure 15. Phylogram generated from the best scoring RAxML tree, based on a combined ITS LSU, SSU, RPB 2 and TEF 1 - α sequence dataset. Berkleasmium longisporum Y. Z. Lu, J. C. Kang & K. D. Hyde, (MFLUCC 17-1999) and B. thailandicum (Tanney & A. N. Mill.) Y. Z. Lu & K. D. Hyde, (MFLUCC 17-2000) are selected as the outgroup taxa. Bootstrap support values for ML equal to or greater than 70 % and PP equal to or greater than 0.90 are given above the nodes. All type strains are in bold and newly-generated sequences are in red.

Figure 22. Split graphs showing the results of the pairwise homoplasy index (PHI) test of the new taxa and closely-related taxa using LogDet transformation and splits decomposition. a Leucaenicola coffeae; b Montagnula coffeae; c Xenodidymella coffeae; d Flabellascoma coffeae; e Longiostiolum coffeae; f Helminthosporium puerensis; g Neomassaria coffeae; h Neooccultibambusa coffeae; i Pararoussoella coffeae; j Cycasicola coffeae. PHI test result P-value (Φw) ≤ 0.05 indicates that there is significant recombination between the isolates included in the alignment. The new taxa are in red, “ T ” indicate the type species and each PHI test value and scale bars are given in the bottom right corner.