Isolation and identification of Aspergilli causing Banana fruit rot

Banana is a commercially and nutritionally important food crop worldwide and is affected by several fungal diseases. The most important post-harvest disease is fruit rotting. Fruit rot is responsible for significant losses in banana. The present study was therefore, designed to isolate and explore the mycoflora associated with banana fruit rot. For this, infected samples were grown on different media to obtain pure cultures of isolated fungal pathogens. Identifications were made initially on morphological basis and then confirmed by genetic analysis. A comprehensive study of micro and macroscopic features revealed four Aspergillus species with two of Aspergillus fumigatus, one of Aspergillus flavus and one of Aspergillus niger. Genetic analysis by Nucleotide sequence analysis of ITS region of rDNA was performed. The sequence alignment of two different isolates of Aspergillus fumigatus showed 99% homology to different strains deposited in Genbank i.e., 004(KU321562.1), SK1(KM207771.1), and 98% homology to AHBR16(KF305755.1), SF8(KX011021.1).