A morphological and molecular study of Myxomycetes collected from Zea mays

Maize (Zea mays L.) is one of the most important crops and staple food in our world. Plant diseases, like infections by mycotoxigenic fungi play an important role in the loss of crop yield. Because of global climate change species of these fungi that thrive in warmer climatic conditions are migrating into Northern areas, consequently there is continuous demand for new methods of eradication of these parasitic moulds. In the framework of an ongoing survey of mycotoxigenic fungi in a mist irrigated test field of different cultivars of Maize, several taxa of myxomycetes have been detected. These are now being studied as potential antagonists against crop damaging and toxigenic pathogens. It is therefore imperative that these myxomycetes are correctly identified, well documented and that molecular voucher data is available for each of the taxa.
Field samples of myxomycetes were collected during four consecutive years (2016-2019) from mid-August until the plants were ensiled around mid-October. In the same period of 2018 and 2019 substrates for moist chamber cultures were taken from different parts of the maize plants to ascertain if there were differences in species assemblages between ground leaf litter, aerial leaf litter, ears and silks.
A morphological study of the sporocarps from a selection of the field collections and moist chamber cultures was performed. From each colony two sporocarps were isolated and separately use for DNA extraction, subsequently PCR was performed with primers to amplify about 1800 bp of the small subunit ribosomal RNA gene (SSU). We present the methods and results of this study.

Publication year:2020