Abstract:
In this project, fungi associated with coffee berries were studied. Coffee berries samples were collected from Chiang Mai, Thailand and used to analyze the epiphytic and endophytic fungal communities. A total of 352 fungal strains were isolated and grouped into 12 genera. The most common taxon was Fusarium with 24 % frequency of occurrence. In this study, Moniliopthora is the first record in coffee plantation. The results showed that variation of the fungal diversity between epiphytic and endophytic communities was insignificant (0.05<P< 0.10). It was also found that fungal diversity in Pha Daeng village was significantly higher than that in Mae Lod village (P < 0.001).
This study was further carried out emphasizing on the genus of Colletotrichum. The combination of morphological and cultural characters, biochemical, pathogenicity testing and DNA barcoding clustered three morphogroups of Colletotrichum associated with coffee berries from Chiang Mai, Thailand and introduced them as new species. Colletotrichum asianum, C. coffeae and C. coffeigenum are introduced as new species in the present study. Furthermore, the combined datasets of actin, partial β-tubulin-2 (tub2), calmoudulin, glutamine synthetase, glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase and the complete rDNA-ITS region revealed Colletotrichum relationships congruent with their morphological characters. The biochemical and DNA barcoding data from multi-genes used here also showed clear differences between C. kahawae, C. gloeosporioides and the new Colletotrichum species.
