First report of binucleate Rhizoctonia AG-K causing root rot on chickpea

Abstract

Twenty-six isolates of Rhizoctonia were obtained from chickpea associated with root rot in Turkey. Twenty-three of them were multinucleate (MN) and 3 of them were binucleate (BN) Rhizoctonia. The BN isolates were characterized based on cultural morphology and they were same in their morphological characters. The BN isolates were pathogenic on chickpea and disease severity values of them varied between 65.7% and 76.1% in radical assay. One of them were tested in pots and disease severity value was 76.6%. The BN isolates were analysed by ITS-5.8S rDNA gene sequencing and they were found to be most similar to group Ceratobasidium sp. AG-K at 99 to 100% identity. The isolates were clustered in the same branch with the reference isolates of AG-K. To our knowledge, this is the first report of binucleate Rhizoctonia AG-K as a pathogen of chickpea in Turkey and also in the world.