First Report of Molecular characterization of Colletotrichum gloeosporioides L. causing Leaf Blight Disease of Arecanut in Karnataka, India

Author: B. Gangadhara Naik, K. Hariprasad*, M. K. Naik, Suresh Patil and M. Ravi Kumar

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Abstract

Arecanut (Areca catechu L.) is one of the most profitable commercial plantation crop cultivated in hilly, maidan and coastal regions of Karnataka. The crop suffers from various biotic and abiotic stresses however, among the biotic stresses leaf spot or leaf blight diseases caused by Colletotrichum gloeosporioides has became very severe from lost few years resulting in huge financial loss to the growers. Initially the causal agent has been identified as Colletotrichum gloeosporioides based on morphological characters. However, pathogen identification was not done based on molecular characterization. Therefore in the present study effort was made to identify the organism through ITS rDNA sequencing and the obtained sequence was deposited in the Genbank. The present work is the first Indian report of ITS rDNA region amplification of Colletotrichum gloeosporioides causing leaf blight disease in arecanut.

Keywords

Arecanut, Leaf Blight, Colletotrichum gloeosporioides, Molecular characterization.

Conclusion

Probably due to the change in scenario all the minor or neglected diseases/ pathogens are taking upper hands in the recent years one such neglected pathogen is Colletotrichum gloeosporioides. Identifying the causal agent facilitates resistance breeding programs and determines the best control strategies against leaf blight disease. Identification of Colletotrichum to the species level was traditionally reliant on host, cultural and morphological descriptions such as size and shape of conidia, colony growth rate and pigmentation, but nowadays comparison of nuclear rDNA internal transcribed spacer is becoming predominant so one such attempt was made to determine the nature of the pathogen through ITS technique. To the best of our knowledge the present work is the first report of ITS rDNA region amplification of Colletotrichum gloeosporioides infecting arecanut in India. However in the future days the multi-locus phylogenetic analyses of the pathogen will be studied by which the pathogen

References

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How to cite this article

B. Gangadhara Naik, K. Hariprasad, M.K. Naik, Suresh Patil and M. Ravi Kumar (2022). First Report of Molecular characterization of Colletotrichum gloeosporioides L. causing Leaf Blight Disease of Arecanut in Karnataka, India. Biological Forum – An Inte