Diversity of fungal endophytes from Phlogacanthus thyrsiformis (Roxb. Ex Hardw.) mabb., a promising medicinal plant in Arunachal Pradesh, northeast India

The findings of the present study deals with the first type of its report, as presented in the current study, on the diversity of fungal endophyte from ethno medicinal plant- Phlogacanthus thyrsiformis (Roxb. ex Hardw.) Mabb., (Acanthaceae). The plant is growing wildly in the forest of Papum Pare, Arunachal Pradesh, India. The samples of the fungal endophytes were collected randomly from the study area and identified based on the morphological, cultural, and reproductive structures (hyaline, ellipsoidal, aseptate, pycnidia, beta conidia, perithecia, asci and ascospores). Further, the phylogenetic analysis of the isolated species was made, using the sequences of 5.8S and 28S rDNA internal transcribed spacer sequence 1 and 4. Overall, 41 fungal spp have been isolated, out of which 37 species belong to the class Ascomycetes; 01 species belong to the each class Zygomycota, Oomycota and Basidiomycota, respectively; however 01 fungal endophyte couldn't identified properly. The maximum number of fungal isolates were recorded from leaves (37%), followed by stems (33%) and root (30%). The observations shows that Colletotrichum siamense was the most dominant endophytic fungi, isolated from the selected plant (P. thyrsiformis); followed by Chaetomium globosum, Sordaria fimicola, Aureobasidium sp., Pythiopsis cymosa etc. However, Colletotrichum siamense, Aspergillus fischeri, Plenodomus wasabiae, Aspergillus fumigatus, Nigrospora oryzae, Saccharomycetales sp., Epicoccum nigrum., Curvularia borreriae, Colletotrichum guajavae were the common fungal endophytes recorded from all the plant parts viz., leaf, stem and roots. Besides this, the density of colonization (rD%) was also recorded chronologically as Colletotrichum siamense (12.66%) < Chaetomium globosum (3.33%) < Sordariomycetes sp., Sordaria fimicola and Aureobasidium sp. (2.66%) followed by the other remaining endophytes (0.66% to 2.00%), respectively.