Molecular characterization of selected fungal and bacterial endophytes in acid lime

Endophytes are the microorganisms that are present in living tissue of various plant parts (roots, fruits, stem, seed, leaf etc,). Endophytic microorganisms are good source of antibiotics. Endophytic antagonists were isolated from the roots of healthy acid lime plants collected from major acid lime growing areas of Andhra Pradesh. A total of 8 fungal and 10 bacterial endophytic antagonists were isolated. The antagonists were further subjected to preliminary screening, out of which only 6 endophytic fungal antagonists (EFA 1-6) and 8 endophytic bacterial antagonists (EBA 1-8) isolates showed good inhibitory effect on radial growth of Fusarium solani causing dry root rot in acid lime in vitro. Among them the one of the best fungal and bacterial antagonists that were found to be extremely efficient against Fusarium solani in dual culture assay were selected for further molecular identification. The BLAST results revealed that one of the fungal isolate had shown 100% similarity with Aspergillus fumigatus and one of the bacterial isolate had shown 95.56% similarity with Pseudomonas aeruginosa.