The Pathogenicity and the Biological Control Potentials of Cladosporium cladosporioides and Epicoccum nigrum in Crops: A Review

International Journal of Research and Scientific Innovation (IJRSI) | Volume VI, Issue VI, June 2019 | ISSN 2321–2705

The Pathogenicity and the Biological Control Potentials of Cladosporium cladosporioides and Epicoccum nigrum in Crops: A Review

Aigbe*, S. O

 *Department of Crop Science, Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma, Nigeria

Abstract– Cladosporium species are cosmopolitan fungi in nature and exhibit diverse lifestyles including saprophytes, plant pathogens, fungicolous, human pathogens and endophytes. Similarly, Epicoccum nigrum is a fungus species that is both plant pathogenic and and endophyte. It is a widespread fungus which produces coloured pigments that can be used as antifungal agents against other pathogenic fungi. Cladosporium cladosporioides and Epicoccum nigrum have both been severally reported as pathogens of economically important crops plants. They have also both been reported as biological contro agents of some pathogens of important  certain crops. This is a review of the pathogenicity and the biological control activities of these fungi on econimically important crops.

Keywords– Cladosporium cladosporioides, Epicoccum nigrum, pathogenicity, biological control

Introduction

Cladosporium is one of the most common genera of fungi occurring on various substrates and includes species antagonism to pathogenic fungal species has been described for the genus ( Singh and Singh, 1994). Cladosporium with diverse lifestyles. Besides saprophytic behavior, cladosporioides has also been previously reported on two-spotted spider mite (Tetranychus urticae) and on alfalfa weevil larvae (Narmani et al., 2016). Cladosporium cladosporioides colony on Potato Dextrose Agar (PDA) was observed to have a velvet-like appearance, and their color ranged between olivaceous-brown and smoky-grey to olive and almost black. The intercalary conidia of the isolates were elliptical to limoniform. The secondary ramoconidia of these isolates were 0- or 1-septate. (Nam et al., 2015). Colony, after 18 days of incubation at 25°C on PDA was observed to appear gray in color, with salient points, short dense fluffiness, clear water exudates on top, and yellow pigment released into the media. The backside of colony appeared dark brown. Conidia were round to fusiform, growing singly or in clusters. Septa were observed in some conidia (Sun et al., 2017).

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