Fusarium spp. associated with crown and root rot in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan

Abstract

Little is known about the distribution and prevalence of pathogens of underground parts of winter wheat in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. In this study, a detailed survey study was conducted to assess the distribution of pathogen the country to generate information and understand disease dynamics, as well as to test the pathogenicity of the obtained species on a susceptible wheat cultivar.Wheat (Triticum spp.) is a primary source of calories and protein (Shiferaw et al. 2013), grown on 219 million ha and yielding 760.9 million tons (FAOSTAT 2022). Bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) and durum wheat (T. durum Desf.) provide a major contribution to the diets of humans and livestock in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, with an average annual production of about 1.82 million tons in a planted area of about 0.59 million ha and with 14.3 million tons produced on 12.1 million ha, respectively. Especially, Kazakhstan’s wheat yield (1182.5 ton/ha) falls far short of the global average (3474.4 ton/ha) due to biotic and abiotic stressors.The complex fungal species attacking the crown and root tissues of wheat causes a serious problem, including damping-off, blight, necrosis, and dry rotting of the root, crown, sub-crown, and lower stem tissues, along with wilting and stunting of seedlings and mature wheat plants (Bockus et al. 2010), resulting in significant yield reductions in the major wheat-producing regions of the world (Gonzalez and Trevathan 2000).Template DNA was extracted from 50–100 mg of fungal powder using a DNeasy Blood and Tissue Kit (Qiagen, Hilden, Germany) according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

The translation elongation factor 1- alpha (EF1-α) gene and the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region of ribosomal DNA were amplified with EF1/EF2 (O’Donnell et al. 1998) and ITS1/ITS4 (White et al. 1990) primer sets, respectively.