Fusarium musae, agent of crown rot disease of banana infects plants and humans

Fusarium musae is one of the causal agents of crown rot on banana fruits, an important post-harvest disease of banana fruits. Recent studies suggested that F. musae can be isolated also from human patients where it causes nail and eye lesions as well as systemic infection in immunocompromised patients. A set of experiments was carried out to estimate the potential risk of this pathogen to spread from food to clinical settings. A worldwide collection of 19 strains isolated from banana fruits and human patients was classified using multigene phylogeny and infection behaviour on banana fruits. Moreover, the genomes of two representative strains of F. musae were sequenced using a using both short and long reads. Mitochondrial genome analysis confirmed the txonomic identity (100% identity at the protein level) of the strains with different host origin. The susceptibility to eight widely used agricultural azole fungicides (prochloraz, tebuconazole, epoxiconazole, difenoconazole, propiconazole, tetraconazole, flusilazole, and fenbuconazole) was furthermore investigated. The strains of human origin, in most of the cases, showed comparable ability to those of plant origin to cause rot symptoms on banana fruits and similar susceptibility to azoles. Overall, our data confirm both taxonomically and physiologically that F. musae is a potential cross kingdom pathogen.