Isolation and Identification of Fungal Isolates from the Rhizospheric Region of a Legume Crop-Cicer arietinum L.

Abstract

The legume crop, Cicer arietinum L., commonly known as chickpea, belongs to the family Fabaceae. It is the world's second-most significant legume in terms of total pulse production. Present study was conducted on identifying and isolating the legume crop (Cicer arietinum) rhizosphere mycoflora. Saini village, Mawana road, Meerut was the source of the rhizosphere soil samples utilised in this study. Utilizing a hoe, the entire plant (shoot and root) was removed from the field. Serial dilution plate technique was use for isolation of fungal strain of test crop plant and using potato dextrose agar medium, sample inoculation was completed. A total of 128 fungal isolates of different fungal species were isolated. These 128 fungal isolates belonged to eleven species. Out of eleven species, eight species were identify viz. Aspergillus niger, A. flavus, Penicillium spp., Alternaria spp., Cladosporium spp., Fusarium spp., Trichoderma spp. and Rhizopus spp. Aspergillus niger had the highest percentage frequency of occurrences of 19.53% and Trichoderma spp. had the lowest percentage frequency of occurrence of 2.34% respectively. Conclusively, despite the significant amount of research that has previously been done on the soil's microflora, it must be acknowledged that no one has yet been able to paint a complete picture of all of the interactions between the many groups of living beings in the soil. This will require cooperation amongst plant scientists, environmentalists, and agronomists to build the rhizotron system, wherein molecular and biochemical biology investigations might be carried out on the spot, in order to develop fresh approaches to investigating rhizosphere ecology under the current environmental circumstances.