Salicornia europaea L. is a euhalophyte increasingly cultivated as a high-value green vegetable. In July 2021, root and crown rot occurred on 6-month-old S. europaea plants grown in peat-filled pots under a greenhouse, affecting 25% of plants. The causal agent was identified as Fusarium pseudograminearum O'Donnell & T. Aoki using morphological and molecular analyses. An experiment to assess the pathogenicity of this fungus to S. europaea was conducted with 96 seedlings in hydroponic culture. Half of these plants were inoculated with a conidial suspension of F. pseudograminearum. At 24 days post inoculation (dpi), half of the plants were transferred into a new hydroponic system, while the other plants were transplanted into pots. At 80 dpi, all inoculated plants grown in pots had shoot browning and desiccation symptoms, while these symptoms developed more slowly in 70% of the hydroponically grown inoculated plants. A qualitative symptom severity assessment scale showed that disease severity was greater (63%) in pot-grown plants than in hydroponically grown plants (46%). Fusarium pseudograminearum was consistently reisolated from diseased plants in both cultivation systems (62% from pots and 83% from hydroponics) fulfilling Koch's postulates. Production of deoxynivalenol (DON) and zearalenone (ZEA) was investigated in vitro and in planta. Traces of DON (0.029 +/- 0.012 mg kg(-1)) were found in severely damaged plants grown in hydroponics. In the in vitro test, F. pseudograminearum isolates from wheat crops in Spain (isolate ColPat-351) and Italy (isolate PVS Fu-7) were also assessed, and all tested isolates produced considerable amounts of ZEA. Fusarium pseudograminearum isolates obtained from S. europaea produced more DON (6.81 +/- 0.24 mg kg(-1), on average) than the Italian isolate PVS Fu-7 (0.37 +/- 0.06 mg kg(-1)), while DON production by the Spanish isolate ColPat-351 was less than the limit of detection (< 0.25 mg kg(-1)). This is the first report of root and crown rot caused by F. pseudograminearum on S. europaea.

Zearalenone (ZEN) is a widespread mycotoxin that causes serious damage to animal husbandry and poses a threat to human health. A screen of ZEN-degrading soil bacteria yielded Bacillus subtilis YT-4, which yielded 80% ZEN degradation after 6 h and 95% after 36 h. The gene sequence encoding the degradative enzyme ZENY was mined from the genome of YT-4 and expressed in yeast. ZENY is an alpha/beta-hydrolase with an optimal enzyme activity at 37 degrees C and pH 8. By breaking the lactone ring of ZEN, it produces ZENY-C18H24O5 with a molecular weight of 320.16 g/mol. Sequence comparison and molecular docking analyses identified the catalytic ZENY triad 99S-245H-123E and the primary ZEN-binding mode within the hydrophobic pocket of the enzyme. To improve the thermal stability of the enzyme for industrial applications, we introduced a mutation at the N-terminus, specifically replacing the fifth residue N with V, and achieved a 25% improvement in stability at 45 degrees C. These findings aim to achieve ZEN biodegradation and provide insight into the structure and function of ZEN hydrolases.