Abstract
The present work is aimed to hypothesize that fungal endophytes associated with wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) plants can play a variety of roles in biotechnology including plant growth. Out of 67 fungal isolates, five maximum drought-tolerant isolates were used to check their various plant growth-promoting traits, antioxidants, and antifungal activities under secondary screening. Fungal isolate #8TAKS-3a exhibited the maximum drought tolerance capacity and potential to produce auxin, gibberellic acid, ACC deaminase, phosphate, zinc solubilization, ammonia, siderophore, and extracellular enzyme activities followed by #6TAKR-1a isolate. In terms of antioxidant activities, #8TAKS-3a culture also showed maximum DPPH scavenging, total antioxidant, and NO-scavenging activities. However, #6TAKR-1a exhibited maximum total flavonoid content, total phenolic content, and Fe-reducing power and also the highest growth inhibition of Aspergillus niger (ITCC 6152) and Colletotrichum sp. (ITCC 6152). Based on morphological characters and multi-locus phylogenetic analysis of the nuc rDNA internal transcribed spacer region (ITS1-5.8S-ITS2 = ITS), β-tubulin (TUB 2), and RNA polymerase II second largest subunit (RPB2) genes, potent fungal isolate #8TAKS-3a was identified as Talaromyces purpureogenus. Under the in vitro conditions, T. purpureogenus (#8TAKS-3a) was used as a bioinoculant that displayed a significant increase in various physio-biochemical growth parameters under normal and stressed conditions (p < 0.05). Our results indicate that drought stress-tolerant T. purpureogenus can be further used for field testing as a growth promoter.
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Acknowledgements
RK is thankful to the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), New Delhi, for the award of Junior Research Fellowship (No. 09/677(0041)/2019-EMR1) and Department of Biotechnology, Thapar Institute of Engineering & Technology (T.I.E.T.), Patiala, Punjab, for providing the necessary infrastructure to perform the research work.
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This study was supported by the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), New Delhi, for financial assistance through the award of Junior Research Fellowship No. 09/677(0041)/2019-EMR1.
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The present work was conceived and designed by Sanjai Saxena and Ramandeep Kaur. Ramandeep Kaur performed all experiments and analyzed the data. Ramandeep Kaur prepared manuscript under the supervision of Sanjai Saxena.
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Kaur, R., Saxena, S. Evaluation of drought-tolerant endophytic fungus Talaromyces purpureogenus as a bioinoculant for wheat seedlings under normal and drought-stressed circumstances. Folia Microbiol 68, 781–799 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12223-023-01051-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12223-023-01051-1