Molecular Identification and Scar Detection of Entomopathogenic Fungi of the Genus Beauveria

Abstract

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in identifying and studying beneficial microorganisms that can be used in organic farming as fertilizers and plant protection agents. Entomopathogenic fungi with an endophytic nature of the genus Beauveria are quite promising and their identification and detection in the plant and soil samples are of great importance. Molecular identification of fungi of the genus Beauveria was conducted by sequencing the internal transcribed spacer 1 and 5.8S ribosomal RNA gene (ITS) regions with universal primers. As a result of the sequencing, it was found that the analysed strains belong to four genera of Beauveria with the following percentage distribution: B. bassiana (68.18%), B. pseudobassiana (13.64%), B. varroae (9.09%) and B. tenella (9.09%). The largest percentages of the strains were identified as B. bassiana. Sequence-characterized amplified regions (SCAR) have been applied for the detection of Beauveria strains in the field samples. The efficiency and ability of three pairs of SCAR markers to differentiate the studied strains were tested. The applied SCAR markers generated fragments with expected length in more than 90% of the investigated strains and could be used as markers for the detection of the fungi from the genus Beauveria in field samples. In the selected experimental conditions only B. varroe 501 and B. tenella 593 lack fragments with used SCAR markers.