Systematic search for cultivatable fungi that best deconstruct cell walls of Miscanthus and sugarcane in the field.

ABSTRACT: The goals of our project were to document the diversity and distributions of cultivable fungi associated with decaying Miscanthus and sugarcane plants in nature and to further assess biodegradation of host plant cell walls by these fungi in pure cultures. Late in 2008 and early in 2009 we collected decaying Miscanthus and Saccharum from 8 sites in Illinois and 11 sites in Louisiana, respectively. To recover fungi that truly decay plants and to recover slow-growing fungi, we washed the plant material repeatedly to remove spores and cultivated fungi from plant fragments small enough to harbor at most one mycelium. We randomly selected 950 fungal colonies out of 4,560 microwell colonies and used molecular identification to discover that the most frequently recovered fungal species resided in

SUBMITTER: Shrestha P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3147484 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature