Investigation of fungi accompanying wheat grains at wheat cultivation areas in Iraq and the possibility of diagnosing it

Abstract

The aim of this study was isolating and diagnosing the fungi accompanying the harvested wheat grains for the 2021 agricultural season, at some Iraqi provinces: Erbil, Sulaymaniyah, Mosul, Najaf, Karbala, Qadisiyah, Muthanna, ThiQar and Basra. The results of the field survey showed the accompanying fungi Alternaria sp, Aspergillus flavus, Aspergillus niger, Fusarium sp, Mucor, Penicillium sp, Rhizopus sp and other fungi. The results confirmed that the two genus, A. flavus and Alternaria sp, were the most prominent in all Iraqi provinces, with mean of 35.84 % for A. flavus and 25.36 % for Alternaria sp, followed by A. niger, and then both the fungi Fusarium sp, Rhizopus sp, Penicillium sp and Mucor, with mean 20.008, 5.20, 4.61, 2.20 and 0.63%, respectively. The incidence of other undiagnosed fungi was 6.09%, the genus A. niger recorded the highest occurrence in the provinces of ThiQar and Mosul with 45 and 40%, respectively, it was less visible in Erbil by 2.73%. It was also noted that the genus Fusarium sp recorded its highest occurrence in the provinces of Erbil and ThiQar with a percentage of 10.95 and 10%, while it was not recorded in the holy province of Karbala, the percentage of its occurrence varied in the rest of the provinces. The fungus Mucor sp recorded 2.94, 2.5, 1.4 and 1.35% at the provinces of Qadisiyah, ThiQar, Sulaymaniyah and Muthanna, respectively, while it was not recorded in the rest of the provinces. The genus Penicillium sp recorded occurrences in some Iraqi provinces by 5.47% in Erbil province and 4.83 and 4.41% in Karbala and Qadisiyah provinces, respectively, the percentage of his occurrence was 1.4% in Sulaymaniyah province and 1.26 in Najaf. The rest of the provinces did not record his occurrence. As for the genus Rhizopus sp, it appeared on wheat grains in most of the Iraqi provinces in different proportions, the highest percentage of its occurrence was in Basra Province, with 11.11%, did not record his occurrence in the province of Qadisiyah, while the results showed that A. flavus was the most frequent fungus at the level of the provinces under study, with a frequency of 22.77%. The fungus Alternaria sp ranked second with a frequency of 16.22%, where it was observed that the highest frequency was for A. flavus in the provinces of Muthanna and Najaf Al-Ashraf by 43% and 34%, respectively.The process of molecular diagnosis using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology for the most frequent isolate showed that it belongs to the genus Aspergillus flavus, it showed a 90% concordance with global isolates. The nucleotide sequence of the isolate has been deposited in GenBank under accession number ON932490.