Molecular characterization of Fusarium sp. from maize seeds

Abstract

The investigation was undertaken at the Department of Plant Pathology, B. A. College of Agriculture, Anand Agricultural University, Anand, India during 2021-22. Genetic identification was done to identify the fungal pathogen and Internal Transcribed Spacer (ITS) rDNA was employed to identify the fungal pathogen at the species level. The molecular identification of the dominant seed mycoflora of maize i.e. Fusarium oxysporum was performed via, PCR amplification and sequencing of the ITS region of fungal DNA (rDNA) with universal primer pairs ITS1 and ITS4. The ITS primers produced an amplicon of 547 bp which was purified and sequenced. The sequences of rDNA region (Accession No. ON637065.1) were aligned and analyzed in the NCBI nucleotide BLAST. It showed 99.16% similarity with the already reported F. oxysporum (MN272279.1, MK751702.1, MF063025.1, KF534741.1, and JN585764.1) sequences.