Moleculer characterization of some common fungal pathogens causing diseases in mushroom production areas of Korkuteli district of Antalya province

Korkuteli district of Antalya province is the leading cultivated mushroom and mushroom compost producer and play a pivotal role in the determination of mushroom prices in the country. White button mushroom Agaricus bisporus is commercially the most commonly grown cultivated mushroom species in the country as in the all around the world. However, growers face many probles in mushroom production and diseases are the major problem causing serious losses in mushroom yield and quality. In particular, dry bubble (Verticillium fungicola), wet buble (Mycogone perniciosa), cobweb (Cladobotryum spp.) ve green mold (Trichoderma spp.) are the important fungal diseases that are the most widespread and difficult to manage in mushroom production in the Korkuteli region. The research about these diseases are limited to survey studies and morphological identification of the causal fungi. There is no information about the species, subspecies and if present races structure of these fungi in region. In this thesis research, attempts were made to identify and charecterize the isolates of these 4 disease agent fungi collected from mushroom growing facilities of Korkuteli district by molecular methods. For this aim, mushroom samples displaying symptoms of each diseases were collected from 27 different mushrom growing farms and fungus isolations are made. The internal transcribed spacer region of ribosomal DNA of the isolates were amplified in Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) and sequenced using universal primers ITS1-F and ITS4. ITS sequences of the isolates were compared with the sequences of isolates from other parts of the world available in the GenBank in NCBI Blast and filogenetic analyses and the common species, subspecies and races of 4 fungal diseases were identified. In the studies, Verticillium fungicola var. fungicola (dry bubble) was the most commonly isolated pathogen followed by Trichoderma aggressivum f. aggressivum (Green Mold), Cladobotryum mycophilum (Cobweb) ve Mycogone pernisiosa (Wet) from the diseased mushroom samples. A PCR product of 680-730 bp were obtained from PCR amplification of rDNA ITS regions with ITS1-F/ ITS4 primer pair. ITS sequences of Korkuteli isolates of 4 fungal pathogens were 99-100 % similar to the sequences of the isolates of each fungus available in the Genbank in Blast similarity analyses. In both Blast and Phylogenetic analyses revelaed that 19 isolates of dry bubble fungus belonged to V. fungicola var. fungicola while 10 isolates of wet buble fungus were M. pernisiosa. All 10 isolates of cobweb disease fungus were identified as C. mycophilum contrary to common belief that the disease in the region is caused by C.dendroides in the anayses. The results of the analyses also revealed that out of 11 isolates of green mold fungus, 10 isolates were T. aggressivum f. aggressivum and 1 isolate T. aggressivum f. europaeum.