Molecular Characterization and Fungicidal Activity of some Isolated Endophytic Fungi from some Wild Plants in Egypt

Abstract

Endophytic fungi have several beneficial properties like the production of various bioactive compounds and antimicrobial impacts against many plant pathogens. So, they are qualified to be good biological control agents. The present study aimed to detect endophytic fungal isolates from eight wild plants in Egypt, identify these isolated fungal strains, determine the colonization frequency %, the most prevalent fungal strains and study the antimicrobial activity of these dominant isolates. Fifteen endophytic fungal strain was isolated from the selected wild plant species and morphologically identified. The most four dominant fungal strains were selected and confirmed their identification based on the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region sequence by using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) with the primer pairs ITS1/ITS4. The results revealed that among the selected plant species, Calotropis procera had the highest endophytic fungi diversity (relative frequency 25%). The most dominant isolates were molecularly identified as Aspergillus niger, and Beauveria bassiana with dominance percentage 15.25% followed by A. terreus (13.5%) then Trichoderma harzianum (11.86%). The antagonistic activity of these four isolates against some plant pathogenic fungi using both dual culture technique and the ethyl extracts of these isolates at different concentration (100, 200, 300 ppm) were examined. The results proved the efficiency of almost all of these isolates in repressing the pathogen growth except endophytic B. bassiana, the effect was not clear. This study revealed that wild plants are a good source of many endophytic fungal strains that may be exploited in different fields like the biological control field.