Identification of endophytic fungi from the medicinal plants of Biligirirangana hill, Karnataka

Four plants with medicinal properties Carica papaya, Phyllanthus amarus, Tinospora cordifolia and Azadiracta indica were selected as a host plant for the isolation of endophytic fungi collected from Biligirirangana Hill, ranges from 11° 40’ to 12° 09’ North and 77° 05’ to 77° 01’ East, the southern part of Eastern Ghats Chamarajanagar District, Karnataka. The leaves of these plants revealed two, four, six and three isolates of endophytic fungi which belonged to the family Hypomycetes, Ascomycetes, Dothideomycetes, Coleomycetes respectively. One of the unidentified strain from each of the above four medicinal plant isolate was subjected to molecular analysis followed by 18SrRNA sequence, internal transcribed spacer regions and phylogenetic analysis. Based on the gene sequencing and phylogenetic tree the clusters species of the fungal isolate was found to be Stemphylium lycopersici, Epicoccum nigrum, Leptosphaerulina arachidicola and Phomopsis azadirachtae reported in this paper