Notes on phytopathogenic fungi reported from Sikkim, India and their broad inter-taxa affinities to plant hosts as inferred from data mining

Abstract

Fungi play a critical role in plant pathology, and impacts human economy and food security. This study focuses on compiling a checklist of phytopathogenic fungi and their plant hosts reported from Sikkim, India and examines the association between those fungi and plant hosts through Cramer’s V test and <italic>dplyr</italic> based data mining in R program with aim to aid in disease management. The study compiled a checklist of 90 phytopathogenic fungal species under 23 orders, 38 families and 60 genera and 82 species of plant hosts under 38 families and 68 genera and found significant affinities (p &lt; 0.05) between fungal taxa and host families. However, associations between fungal taxa with host species was not significant. Jaccard Index of Similarity showed preference towards host family was most common (0.11) between Ascomycota and Basidiomycota, while preference towards host genus was least common (0.00) between Basidiomycota and Oomycota. The study emphasizes the potential of data mining as a tool for identifying patterns of association between phytopathogenic fungi and their plant hosts, identifying alternative hosts, and the significance of phytopathogenic fungi as a source of bioactive compounds like antibiotics and enzymes, as well as their potential to produce mycotoxins and allergenic contaminants that pose a threat to human health. The study suggests further evaluation of the role of endophytes and saprophytes (facultative parasites) in disease development, documention of disease incidence locations, and identification of fungal phytopathogens at the strain, pathotype, or forma specialis level towards effective disease monitoring and management.