Occurrence and characterisation of mycoflora in soil of different health conditions associated with white root rot disease in Malaysian rubber plantation

In malaysia,rubber trees are planted for latex and it has contributed 5.7 % to the world's total production of natural rubber. however,nearly half of the rubber trees are lost to white root rot (wrr) disease caused by rigidoporus microporus over the planting period. a total of 18 fungi belonging to 16 species distributed in 10 genera were isolated from the soil of three different tree health conditions in a rubber plantation at rubber research institute of malaysia (rrim),sungai buloh. the objective was to characterise the fungi diversity with the health condition of rubber trees. soil samples were collected from study site in august 2013 (1) white root rot (wrr) affected tree zone (atz) (2) healthy tree zone (htz) and (3) regrowth tree zone (rtz). the soil mycoflora were isolated using soil dilution plate technique on potato dextrose agar (pda). identification and characterisation of the mycoflora were based on fungi morphology and pcr-based techniques. results showed that rtz zone had the greatest species diversity with 13 species of fungi isolated followed by htz zone with six species and atz zone with two species. the highest frequency of occurrence in the soils was shown by the genus penicillium (31.25%) and trichoderma (18.75%),respectively. the study will be useful to understand the relationship of fungal distribution and trees health conditions. among the isolates,species such as trichoderma spp. and chaetomium cupreum can be evaluated for the suppression of wrr disease. © copyright by the rubber research institute of malaysia all rights reserved.