All PCR products were of the expected size when examined by agarose gel electrophoresis. All Austrian F. graminearum isolates tested could be detected with the developed method. Interestingly one additional Fusarium isolate originally included in the group of Austrian F. graminearum isolates, was presumptively identified by sequence comparison to actually be closer related to F. floccifera Despite only one mismatch in nucleotide sequence in the binding area of the TaqMan probe this isolate was not detected by our PCR approach. The amplification of the standard dilution series yielded linear and reliable results (R2>0.997) in the range from 10 to 106 copies of the beta-tubulin gene per PCR reaction (range of quantitation). The qualitative detection limit for the beta-tubulin gene was as low as 5 gene copies.