Powdery mildew (PM) of flax is caused by the obligate parasite Odium lini. One
obvious gap in our current knowledge of O. lini is the lack of consensus regarding the
name of its teleomorph, which has been referred to as Erysiphe polygoni or E.
cichoracearum. As an attempt to reslove this problem, this study used biostatistical
analysis (BSA) and sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-
PAGE) of proteins to evaluate the degree of relatedness between O. lini and some
anamorphs of PM fungi, whose teleomorphic taxonomy is well established. In BSA,
measurements were made for some quantitative morphological traits of the
anamorphs of various fungi belong to E. cichoracearum and E. polygoni. The obtained
measurements were subjected to cluster analysis by the unweighted pair-group
method based on arithmetic means (UPGMA) and a phenogram was constructed.
This phenogram showed that morphotypes 1 and 2 of O. lini belong to E. polygoni,
while morphotype 3 belongs to E. cichoracearum. In SDS-PAGE, protein profiles of O.
lini were compared with those of E. polygoni from peas and E. cichoracearum from
sunflower. On the basis of electrophoretic dissimilarities among protein banding
patterns, fungi were grouped by cluster analysis (UPGMA) and the results were
expressed as a phenogram. This phenogram confirmed that morphotypes 1 and 2 of
O. lini belong to E. polygoni.