African Journal of Water Conservation and Sustainability

ISSN 2375-0936

African Journal of Water Conservation and Sustainability ISSN 2375-0936 Vol. 11 (6), pp. 001-009, June, 2023. © International Scholars Journals

Full Length Research Paper

Myrothecium roridum's effectiveness in eradicating water hyacinth and species identification based on molecular information

Orawan Piyaboon1, Arm Unartngam1 and Jintana Unartngam2*

1Bioproducts Science, Department of Science, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Science, Kasetsart University, Kamphaeng Saen Campus, Nakhon Pathom, 73140, Thailand. *Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]. Tel: 66-84-1582586.

2Department of Plant Pathology, Faculty of Agriculture at Kamphaeng Saen, Kasetsart University, Kamphaeng Saen Campus, Nakhon Pathom, 73140, Thailand.

Accepted 26 February, 2023

Abstract

Myrothecium roridum isolates were evaluated for their effectiveness in controlling the aggressive water hyacinth and molecular identification was conducted using internal transcribed spacer (ITS) rDNA region and amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) markers. M. roridum isolates were collected from nine provinces of Thailand. Seventy isolates were included in the primary screening, using colonial growth rate and spore number measurement. The results indicate that five isolates were the most aggressive and so were selected to evaluate their effectiveness in controlling the water hyacinth. The result showed that M. roridum isolate KKFC 408 had significantly highest disease severity (P<0.05) and the highest reduction for the fresh weight of water hyacinth. These five isolates DNA were amplified and sequenced using ITS1 and ITS4 universal primer for species identification. The data analyzed showed that five sequences of M. roridum were in the same group agreeing with other sequences of M. roridum recorded in the GenBank database, which correlated to morphological observation results. The AFLP result indicated that fifteen isolates of M. roridum were divided into four subgroups which were not correlated to the geographical area.

Key words: Amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP), internal transcribed spacer (ITS) of rDNA region, mycoherbicide.