Molecular identification of fungi associated with Lagenaria siceraria (Molina) Standl necrosis in Côte d’Ivoire

Parasitic pressure, particularly fungal diseases, represents a major constraint to Lagenaria siceraria (L. siceraria) production. It causes considerable losses of agricultural production. Thus, identification of fungi infecting leaves of L. siceraria was necessary. Some infected leaves of L. siceraria were collected in 30 fields of 5 localities of Côte d’Ivoire and their examination had shown five types of symptoms. Fungi genera were identified by their morphological and microscopic characteristics. Then, the study of molecular diversity based on rDNA provided a powerful tool for identification of major isolated fungal genera. The nuclear ribosomal DNA region (ITS1, 5,8S and ITS2) of fungal strains was PCR amplified using with the universal primers, ITS1 and ITS4. That amplification generated only one fragment of about 600 bp. The sequence data obtained from the PCR products were aligned and compared with other sequences. Homologous sequences of fungi were obtained from GenBank database.