FIRST RECORD OF Curvularia inaequalis FROM WHEAT ROOTS IN IRAQ

Sampling was conducted in twenty-four commercial wheat fields located at Sumil district – Duhok province. Morphological observations were recorded based on colony color, conidia and conidiophore characters. Suspected fungus associated with wheat root formed velvety to dark color colonies. Conidia were pale brown to brown, straight to straightly curved 17.6 – 34.5 µm × 7.6 – 12.1 µm size, formed three to four septation with scarcely on culture media. To confirm the morphological identification, the ITS region of the suspected fungal isolates amplified and the generated sequence was deposited in GenBank. BLAST method provided by NCBI was utilized to analyze its similarity with the homologous sequences. The ITS1/ITS4 rDNA sequences of this strain (No. Bi30) were deposited in NCBI GenBank database (Accession No. MW332244). The phylogenetic analysis of C. inaequalis length generated by Maximum likelihood analysis (ML) consisted of 17 reference strains and one isolate from present study, the phylogenetic tree separated in to three clades groups. A single strain Bi 30 (MW332244) isolated during present study clustered together with C. inaequalis strain USGS29 (MT000601), 79 (MG654438), and MITS1458 (HE861822.1) with 73% bootstrap support. Maximum Parsimony analysis of the ITS dataset separated the phylogenetic tree in to six clades groups. Strain isolated in the present experiment also observed 71% bootstrap support together with the same isolates as in Maximum likelihood analysis. This is the first report isolated and identified Curvularia inaequalis in Iraq.