Morphological and molecular diagnosis of bio-fungus isolate Penicillium commune DSKZ and its laboratory use in biological control of pathogenic fungus Sclerotinia sclerotiorum (Lib) DeBary causing white mold on eggplant

Abstract

The selected fungus isolate Penicillium was diagnosed according to morphological and molecular characteristics when cultured on PDA culture media. The results of DNA extraction from spp. Penicillium fungus that had subjected to a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) showed the possibility of duplicate PCR-amplified products with an expected size of 550 nitrogenous base pairs by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and in the presence of pair of the Forward primer (ITS1) and Reverse primer (ITS4). This is considered the first recording for this isolate in Iraq, and it was registered in the gene bank by a name of DSKZ and its code in the gene bank was MT065753.1, which was registered in the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). Some laboratory tests were conducted on this bio-fungus, where the treatment of antagonism between P.commune fungus and the pathogenic fungus S.sclerotiorum gave the highest percentage of inhibition, which amounted to 86.1, with highly significant differences compared to the control treatment, which amounted to 0.00%. The concentrations of 50% and 60% in the non-heat-treated fungal extracts (non-sterile) in terms of colony diameter and the percentage of inhibition for pathogenic fungus have excelled on the rest of the concentrations, which gave the highest values amounted to 0.00, 100%, respectively, for both concentrations. As for the treatment of the thermally treated fungus extracts (sterilized with an autoclave device at a temperature of 121°C and a pressure of 1.5 kg.cm-1 for 20 min), the 60% concentration has excelled on the rest of the concentrations by giving it the highest values in terms of colony diameter and the percentage of inhibition, which amounted to 1.012 cm and 88.8%, respectively, compared to the control treatment in which the colony diameter and percentage of inhibition amounted to 9.00 cm and 0.00%, respectively. P. commune extracts concentrations also caused an increase in the percentage of germination for eggplant seeds at a probability level of 0.05.