Interactions (reciprocal effects) between wood fungi have been early investi-gated e.g., by Oppermann (1951) and Leslie et al. (1976), and were described in detail by Rayner and Boddy (1988). Antagonism (competitive reciprocal effect), the mutual inhibition and in a broader sense the inhibition of one organism by others, is based on the pro-duction of toxic metabolites, on mycoparasitism, and on nutrient competition.
Based on the work of Rishbeth, stump treat-ment with Phlebiopsis gigantea was developed and successfully used in several countries. Originally in England, the spread of root rot in pine sites was di-minished by the immediate coating of the fresh stump surface with an aqueous spore (asexual arthrospores) suspension of P. gigantea (Meredith 1959; Rish-beth 1963). The antagonist colonizes the stump, that is H. annosum cannot infect it by air-borne spores and thus an infection of neighboring trees via root grafts is prevented. The treatment of spruces yielded differently satisfac-tory results (Korhonen et al. 1994; Holdenrieder et al. 1997). Holdenrieder and Greig (1998) listed also several bacteria, which were antagonistic against H. an-nosum. Promising systems for the biological protection of growing trees have been studied against Armillaria luteobubalina, Chondrostereum purpureum, Phellinus tremulae, P. weirii, and Ophiostoma ulmi (Bruce 1998; also Palli and Retnakaran 1998). There were many attempts for biological wood protection (Bruce 1998).
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