Isolation and screening of phytotoxin-producing actinomycetes for biological control of Cardaria draba

Document Type : Original Research Papers

Authors

1-Department of Microbial Biotechnology, School of Biology and Center of Excellence in Phylogeny of Living Organisms, College of Science, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran. 2-Microbial Technology and Products Research Center, University of Tehran

Abstract

Cardaria draba is an important, troublesome weed in the sustainable production of wheat. In
the first step of this study, 100 actinomycete isolates were purified from soil samples collected
from the rhizosphere and phyllosphere of plants in different provinces of Iran. All isolates were
subjected to primary screening by assaying the fermentation broth of the sterile surfaces of C.
draba leaves. Considerable herbicidal activity was observed for four isolates. During secondary
screening and assaying of the extracted culture medium with ethyl acetate, two isolates,
Streptomyces sp. UTMC 2102 and Streptomyces sp. UTMC 2104, were selected as superior
phytotoxin-producing isolates in the biological control of C. draba. Leaf necrosis was observed
in 500 and 1000 μg/ml and ≥100 μg/ml dilutions for isolates UTMC 2102 and UTMC 2104,
respectively. Phylogenic identification confirmed that the 16S rRNA gene has 100% similarity
to Streptomycin anulatus for the isolate Streptomyces sp. UTMC 2102 and 100% similarity to
Streptomyces vinaceusdrappus for the isolate Streptomyces sp. UTMC 2104. These results
suggest that the S. anulatus and S. vinaceusdrappus isolates can be used in the biological control
of C. draba in wheat fields.
 

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