ISOLATION OF AN ASCOMYCOTA FUNGUS FROM SOIL AND ITS IDENTIFICATION USING DNA BARCODE

Abstract

In this study Ascomycota fungi was isolated from the soil collected from cucumber field. The micromorphological characters of the isolated fungus were muddling with overlapping characters and identification was unwhole. Hence, nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region, the ideal molecular marker, accepted as DNA barcode for fungal identification was sequenced and compared with the existing GenBank, NCBI, database to identify the species. This sequence was deposited in GenBank, NCBI under the accession number MW945403. Based on the homology and phylogenetic analysis, the isolated fungus was identified as Acrothecium nigrum which is the first report of its presence in the cucumber field.