Survey on Natural Occurrence of Endophytes in Maize (Zea mays L.) Ecosystem

Abstract

Fungi that occur inside an asymptomatic plant tissue are known as fungal endophytes. Since a decade there has been high focus on artificial establishment of entomopathogenic fungi as an endophyte in various agricultural and horticultural crops for pest management. But meagre efforts are made to identify their natural occurrence. Keeping this in view, Survey has been conducted in maize at definite phenophases of crop growth i.e. Seedling stage, knee height stage and reproductive stage. Nine genera of fungus i.e., Aspergillus spp., Beauveria spp., Fusarium spp., Lecanicillium spp., Metarhizium spp., Mucor spp. Penicillium spp., Rhizopus spp. and Trichoderma spp. were isolated as naturally occurring entomopathogenic fungal endophytes. Percent colonisation of endophytic fungi was high at seedling stage (16.66 ± 10.03) followed by knee height stage (14.22 ± 5.77) and the least at reproductive stage (13.22 ± 6.00). Thus, the study indicates the potential of natural establishment of endophytes after repeated and continuous use of entomopathogenic fungus for pest management