Isolation and identification of fungal endophytes from Swainsona salsula grown in Ningxia

This study was performed to investigate the taxonomy of fungal endophytes from Swainsona salsula. The fungal endophytes were isolated from S.salsula collected from Ningxia and observed under the microscope. The ITS sequences of the fungal isolates were amplified and sequenced. Analysis of molecular phylogeny based on the fungal ITS sequences was conducted to help to determine the taxonomies of fungal isolates. Four strains, SS_NXB1, SS_NXF1, SS_NXG2 and SS_NXA1, were isolated from S.salsula in this report. The isolates were considered as fungal endophytes of S.salsula with no disease observed on the surface of the plant samples. The first three isolates, SS_NXB1, SS_NXF1 and SS_NXG2, were classified as Acremonium sp. based on the fungal morphology and ITS sequences. However, SS_NXA1 could not be made a taxonomic placement due to the lack of natural conidia and sufficient sequences that represented in GenBank sequence databases.