జర్నల్ ఆఫ్ ప్లాంట్ పాథాలజీ & మైక్రోబయాలజీ

నైరూప్య

Genetic Variation among the Penicillia Isolated From Citrus under Storage Condition

Ahmad Ali Shahid, Mehra Azam, Muhammad Ali, Kiran Nawaz and Moazzam Anees

Pakistan is the sixth largest producer of Kinow (mandarin) and oranges in the world, with 2.1 million tons. In this research, fruit and vegetable markets in Lahore were visited and forty infected citrus samples were collected, surface sterilised and inoculated on potato dextrose agar medium for isolation. According to microscopy and colony characteristics five species of the genus Penicillium (P. digitatum, P. expansum, P. biourgeianum) were identified. Genomic DNA was isolated and internal transcribed spacer (ITS) was amplified by using primers ITS 1 and ITS4 and the 5.8S rRNA genes of fungi. Purified and amplified PCR products were later on sequenced and the sequenced homology was studied by BLAST and searching against databases of Genebank or NCBI software. The DNA sequence homology showed that isolates contain more than 98% homology with P. expansum, P. digitatum and P. biourgeianum known DNA sequences in the gene Data bank. Among these fungal isolates P. biourgieanum was another newly reported species isolated from infected citrus, and was assigned NCBI Gene bank accession number KT336317.