Biodiversity and antifungal potential of endophytic fungi from the medicinal plant Cornus officinalis

• Published in: Symbiosis (Philadelphia, Pa.) Pa.), 2020-07, Vol.81 (3), p.223-233
• Main Authors: Zhao, Xingli, Hu, Zhenjie, Hou, Dianyun, Xu, Huawei, Song, Peng
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Antagonism; Antibiosis; Antifungal activity; Biodiversity; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Cornus officinalis; Developmental Biology; Ecology; Endophytes; Evolutionary Biology; Fungi; Genera; Herbal medicine; Host plants; Life Sciences; Medicinal plants; Microbiology; Pathogens; Physical characteristics; Plant Sciences; Sequence analysis
• ISSN: 0334-5114; 1878-7665
• DOI: 10.1007/s13199-020-00696-7

Endophytic fungi are not only ubiquitous in plants, but also play an important role in the balancing of plant microecosystems. Numerous studies have shown that plant species and environment have a significant influence on the richness of endophytic fungi, and endophytic fungi often provide different forms of fitness benefits to their associated host plants. The present work aimed to isolate and identify endophytic fungi harboured in the tissues of the native medicinal plant Cornus officinalis and screen beneficial fungi to inhibit cornel pathogens. A total of 208 strains were recovered from 720 tissue segments. The overall colonisation and isolation rates of endophytic fungi were 33.89% and 28.89%, with triennial twigs (53.33%, 55%) and fruits (6.67%, 3.33%) having the highest and lowest rates, respectively. On the basis of morphological characteristics and internal transcribed spacer sequence analysis, 183 isolates were classified into 13 genera. Amongst them, Alternaria , Botryosphaeria and Talaromyces were dominant communities, and their relative abundances were 31.25%, 26.92% and 10.10%, respectively. A detailed calculation of the Shannon diversity (H′ = 1.65) and Margalef’s richness indices (Dmg = 2.30) revealed that the overall biodiversity of fungal endophytes in C. officinalis was relatively high, with the stems harbouring the highest diversity. The antagonism assay of 75 representative endophytes on the four main fungal pathogens of C. officinalis indicated that nine strains with antibiosis and eight strains with inhibition rate of more than 50% were obtained by the dual culture. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that investigated the distribution and antifungal activity of endophytic fungi from the medicinal plant C. officinalis .