Exobasidiomycetes

Basidiomycota • fungi • plant diseases • pests-diseases-weeds

Exobasidium vaccinii symptoms (click on image to enlarge it)
Author: James Lindsey
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Exobasidiomycetes

The Exobasidiomycetes are a class of basidiomycetous plant pathogenic fungi which cause diseases like bunt, blights or galls. Important species are for example Karnal bunt or blister blight of tea. They are related to the Ustilaginomycetes. However, they form local interaction zones with their host plant (in contrast to the enlarged interaction zones in the Ustilaginomycetes) and no intracellular hyphal coils (Begerow et al., 2006).

The following orders are here included:

• Exobasidiales
• Microstromatales
• Tilletiales