Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

TALAROMYCES SP. ARE ASSOCIATED WITH SHISHAM (DALBERGIA SISSOO ROXB.) NURSERY DISEASE IN PANTNAGAR, A TERAI REGION OF WESTERN HIMALAYAS

Hemant Dasila, Samiksha Joshi, Manvika Sahgal and Salil Tiwari

Abstract

There is a serious decline of shisham trees in Indian subcontinent. Therefore an investigation was conducted in terai region of Uttarakhand during summer 2015, to isolate and identify the fungal pathogens associated with shisham disease. In all, four fungal species, Aspergillus calidoustus, Fusarium oxysporum, Talaromyces pinophilus and Talaromyces verruculosus were identified to be associated with diseased shisham tree based on morphology and sequence analysis of internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region of the rDNA. Pathogenicity test under polyhouse conditions confirmed that all four fungi cause disease in seedlings of PS90 cultivar of shisham in terai region of Western Himalayas. Maximum infection frequency of 75.00% was exhibited by Fusarium oxysporum and Aspergillus calidoustus followed by Talaromyces sps. Although Fusarium sp. is main etiological agent but this is the first record of Talaromyces sps with shisham seedling disease.