Abstract
Endophytic microbes are hosted inside plants in a symbiotic and hugely benefitting relationship. In the present work, 60 asymptomatic fungi representing nine different genera were isolated from 286 plant tissues of Asparagus racemosus. Fungal endophytes were identified by ITS rDNA sequencing. Penicillium sp. was the most dominant fungus. Tissue specificity was observed by principal component analysis. Cluster analysis revealed correlation between fungal species abundance and mean temperature. Highest Shannon diversity was recorded in leaf tissues ( $${H^\prime }$$ = 1.279) from Delhi in 2010. Pielou’s evenness index was highest in stem tissues sampled from Hyderabad in the first survey. Of the total number of isolates examined, 12% of fungal endophytes demonstrated antifungal activity against the causal agents of four distinctive plant diseases (grey mould, stem rot, root rot and wilting, i.e. Botrytis cinerea, Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, Rhizoctonia solani and Fusarium oxysporum, respectively) in dual-culture bioassay. Penicillium sp. (isolate ARDS-2.3) and Aspergillus oryzae (isolate ARHS-1.1) displayed most effective antifungal activity with IC50 value ranging from 0.381 to 0.955 mg/ml against the broad-spectrum phytopathogens investigated.
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