Isolation, characterization of endophytic fungi of Mimusops elengi (Bakul).
Fresh bark pieces of Mimusops elengiLinn. were used for the isolation of fungal endophytes using standard methods. Mimusops elengi is a small to a large evergreen medicinal plant found all over the different parts of India. Seventy one endophytic fungi belonging to ascomycetes (11.27%), coelomycetes (39.44%) and hyphomycetes (49.29%) were isolated from 200 segments of Mimusops elengi collected from University campus in SagarDistrict, Madhya Pradesh, India. confirmed by the BLASTsearch of sequences of the ITS1-5.8S-ITS2 rDNA region against the NCBI/GenBank data and compared with deposited sequences for identification purpose. Sixteen different fungal species belonging to 16 genera viz. Botryosphaeria mamane, Chaetomium globosum, Rhytidhysteron sp., Phoma
putaminum, Pestaliopsis sp., Colletotricum gleosporoides, Phomopsis sp., Acremonium sp., Alternaria alternata, Beltraniella portoricensis, Cladosporium cladosporioides, Curvularia lunata, Fusarium chlamydosporum, Myrothecium verrucaria, Nigrospora oryzae and Torula herbarum were isolated. The most frequently isolated endophytes were Cladosporium cladosporioides (22.53%), Pestaliopsis sp.,(19.71%), Phomopsis sp., (9.86%) and Chaetomium globosum (8.45%). This study shows that a great number of endophytic fungi exist in the samples obtained from bark
samples of M. elengi.