during disease monitoring , a stem with small , irregular , brown lesions was sampled at a farm in cheonan , chungnam province , in september of 2011 . the infected twig was rotted , and sunken cankers and reddish - brown needles were seen on the infected twig ( fig . 1 ) . after incubation in a humid condition , white mycelia , having dark brown necrosis , developed around the twig cavity . prior to further analysis the ducc505 isolate was grown on pda and maintained at 25. a 5-mm diameter mycelial plug was cut from the margin of a 5-day - old culture of the isolate , and was placed centrally in an 85-mm petri dish containing pda . the isolate was cultured at 25 , and colony characteristics such as color , shape and size were recorded . the colony diameter was measured daily by scoring the average length for a period of 7 days . colonies were whitish , having crenated edges , aerial mycelium on the surface , and with black gregarious fruiting bodies ( fig . conidia were 17~22  3.5~4.2 m , fusiform , 4-septate , and straight to slightly curved . the basal cell was of conical shape with an obtuse end , and pale brown in color . the three median cells were brown : the second cell from base was pale brown , the third cell was a darker brown , and the fourth cell was brown . there were 2~3 tubular , apical appendages arising from the apex of the apical cell . the ducc505 isolate grew better on pda than oat meal agar and malt extract agar ( fig . the optimum temperature for mycelial growth of the isolate ducc505 on pda was 25 ( fig . the isolate ducc505 grew well in a broad range of ph , from 5 to 10 ( fig . 3c ) . these growth properties could be attributed to overcome the ph and low temperature stress in environment . so far , none of fungicides have been registered for the disease control of acanthopanax sp . in the agrochemical use guide book in korea . also , no fungicide has ever been tested for p. ellipsospora isolated from acanthopanax sp . we therefore tested five kinds of fungicides for this study that are commercially available for ascomycete plant pathogens in korea . to understand the agrochemical sensitivity of the ducc505 isolate , we grew it with different concentration of fungicides , and the results are summarized in fig . 3d . in the benomyl and tebuconazol supplemented media , the mycelial growth was completely inhibited at 10 g / ml . this result is similar to pestalotiopsis microspora that is sensitive to tebuconazole . however , the isolate showed relative resistance in all media containing azoxystrobin , dimethomorph and triflumizole . overall , it is suggested that among the five fungicides , benomyl and tebuconazol are the appropriate choice for the control of p. ellipsospora . the ducc505 fungal isolate was grown on pda plates for 5 days at 25. mycelia were harvested by scraping the fungal colonies with a sterile blade . genomic dna was extracted as described by kim et al . , with modifications . from the extracted genomic dna , partial translation elongation factor 1 polymerase chain reaction ( pcr ) was performed as described previously using the universal primers tef728 ( 5'-cat cga gaa gtt cga gaa gg-3 ' )   and tef1 ( 5'-gcc atc ctt gga gat acc agc-3 ' ) . the pcr products were purified with a high pure pcr purification kit ( roche , basel , swiss ) and sequencing was carried out by macrogen inc . the nucleotide sequence of partial tef1- gene of the fungal isolate shares 99% ( 531/536 ) sequence identity with that of known pestalotiopsis ellipsospora . the tef1- gene sequence of the ducc505 was deposited in genbank dna database under accession number kc534872 . 4 ) . thus , based on the molecular and morphological data generated , the isolate was identified as p. ellipsospora . the young twigs were inoculated with a droplet of the ducc505 conidia suspension ( 1.3  10 conidia / ml ) , which was prepared from the fungal cultures grown on pda . the inoculated young twigs were incubated in a humid chamber at 25 for 7 days . as rotting progressed , superficial white mycelium and small black acervuli were observed ( fig . 5 ) . p. ellipsospora was reisolated from the rotted twig lesion , thus fulfilling koch 's postulates . these results demonstrated that p. ellipsospora ducc505 was able to infect a twig of a. divaricatus . this is the first detailed report describing p. ellipsospora isolated from acanthopanax in korea , and it appears to be the first confirmation proving its pathogenicity on acanthopanax twigs .