Soil Fungi from Costa Rica and Panama

Abstract

Although soil fungi from many areas of the world have been extensively studied (7), there have been relatively few investigations of the soil mycobiota in Central America. The most extensive work is that of Farrow (5), who isolated 135 species from the soils of Panama and Costa Rica. Sequeira (16), in an unpublished report, listed 48 species of fungi isolated from Costa Rican soils. Other investigations conducted in Central America were concerned primarily with the isolation of plant pathogenic fungi (14) or with a selected taxon (15). This communication reports in part the results of a survey of fungi found in the rhizosphere of the commercial banana (Musa, AAA group, Gros Michel) and in lowland banana soils of Central America, carried out in conjunction with studies on the Fusarium wilt of banana. Some species are reported that were not recorded by Farrow (5) and this paper may be considered as supplementary to his work.