• anthracnose
• artificial inoculation
• Colletotrichum lupini
• Lupinus albus

Since its first diagnose on lupin in 1939, anthracnose, caused by Colletotrichum lupini, has become a severe disease of lupin worldwide, causing important yield losses up to 100% and becoming a main limiting factor for production of this crop in specificareas.
Several morphological, cultural and molecular data confirm C. lupini as part of the Colletotrichum acutatum species complex. Although the C. acutatum species are considered polyphagous, C. lupini has been shown to have a strict host specialization that makes it a fascinating model for evolutionary and biomolecular studies.
A C. lupini strain (RB221), isolated from Lupinus sp. in Bretagne (France) was used in the present work in its wild type form and after AMT (Agrobacterium Mediated Transformation) with a constitutively expressed GFP (Green Fluorescent Protein) gene. Five stable GFP transformants have been physiologically characterized by evaluating the colony’s growth rate on solid medium and the spore germination ability. In addition, a metabolic characterization was performed by using a phenotypic microarray test (Biolog) in order to evaluate the ability to metabolize 95 different carbon sources. Data collected for the five transformants have been compared with those registered for the wild type. An isolate showing no significant differences when compared with the wild type was selected in order to obtain a marked isolate to be used as a tool to better understand the disease cycle of this pathogen on lupin and, after, the interaction at molecular level with its host.
Since no information concerning the infection and colonization of the host plant by C. lupini are actually available, an artificial inoculation method was set up in order to deeply investigate and to understand how the pathogen infects Lupinus albus.
In addition, the availability of the selected C. lupini RB221 gfp-marked strain will allow to microscopically follow, step by step, the infection and colonization of the host by this emibiotrophic pathogen.
This represents the first step for further analysis such as a transcriptomic evaluation of the C. lupini/ lupin interaction.