*4.2. Fungal Strain and Inoculum Preparation*

The *V. dahliae* isolate V180 was used in all the experiments of this study [3]. It was stored as single-spore isolate on potato dextrose agar (PDA; Difco® Laboratories, MD, USA) slants filled with sterile paraffin oil at 4 ◦C in the dark in the collection of the Department of Agronomy at the University of Córdoba (DAUCO, Spain). Before conducting each experiment, small mycelial fragments of the colonized agar from the tube were plated onto PDA acidified with 2.5 mL L−<sup>1</sup> lactic acid (APDA) and incubated at 24 ◦C in the dark for 10 days in order to obtain fresh colonies. Then, they were transferred to PDA and incubated as previously described.
