Isolation of Endophytic Fungi from Torch Ginger, Etlingera elatior (Jack) R.M. Smith, and Identification of Potential Antagonists against Selected Plant Pathogenic Fungi

Pandi, Sulastri Fitri (2019) Isolation of Endophytic Fungi from Torch Ginger, Etlingera elatior (Jack) R.M. Smith, and Identification of Potential Antagonists against Selected Plant Pathogenic Fungi. Masters thesis, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak.

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Abstract

The screening of antagonistic activity of endophytic fungi isolated from a medicinal plant, Etlingera elatior was carried out against three common plant pathogens which are Colletotrichum gloeosporioides, Fusarium decemcellulare and Ceratocystis paradoxa. Initially, a total of 138 endophytic fungi were isolated from E. elatior samples from four different locations, however, after further subculturing and screening for identical colonies, only 38 endophytic fungi were preceded for the Dual Culture Assay screenings. The antagonisms were found to differ among the isolated endophytic fungi however Neurospora crassa, Aspergillus niger, Penicillium citrinum, Trichoderma harzianum, and Cunninghamella elegans has shown significantly high level of antagonism against C. gloeosporioides. As for F. decemcellulare and C. paradoxa, N. crassa and T. harzianum had exhibited positive antagonism against the two pathogens. Then, the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) produced by the fungi were identified by the Gas Chromatography Mass-Spectrometry (GC-MS) to detect the most abundant compound from each sample. The GC-MS analysis revealed that all of the antagonists possessed a high level of either ester, alcohol and toluene content which were some of the widely known VOCs from various studies. In conclusion, N. crassa showed the highest inhibition on all three pathogens, making it the strongest antagonist when screened through a series of antagonistic tests, compared to the other four fungi. The antagonistic ability of N. crassa was first discovered in this study despite the fact that it has not been previously recognized as one of the well known biological control agents (BCAs). Keywords: Endophytic fungi, E. elatior, antagonistic activity, Dual Culture Assay, secondary metabolites

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