It was my final year project that I did 5 years ago. News at that time were reporting people being hit and killed by falling branches after storm. Trees that were improperly pruned were vulnerable to fungal attack. They become fragile and finally leading to collapse.
My friend and I went out to identify infected trees and collect fungus from the wound area, we only looked for trees from urban area which was not that easy to locate. I eventually found one on a playground. As you can see, the wound area is blue because it had been applied with fungicide and apparently it didnt seem working.
Then we observed it under the microscope. We looked for the mycelium thread and spores
As suggested by our supervisor, it is likely to be Auricularia sp.
We cut them into pieces and put them on top of the agar plate added with antibiotic, after several days of culture, the agar plate would look like this: The middle part is the original fragment!
Then every time when we want to subculture, we cut a piece of agar with mycelium onto a new agar plate for experiment. We looked at its enzymatic activity , its response to different environmental stress and its response to fungicide. We finally conclude that Sodium metabisulfite can be effective against Auricularia sp :)