Biodiversıty of fungi and fungus like organism on Solanum species in Uzbekistan.
Résumé
Solanum is the largest genus in the family Solanaceae with about 2500 identified species
worldwide distributed, except Antarctica. This genus is regarded as economically significant
based on their multiple uses in food crops as well as ornamental and medicinal plants. In
Uzbekistan, about 24 species of Solanaceae have been reported and of these, 7 species belong to
the genus Solanum, some of which are wild while others are cultivated with their leaves, fruits,
or both eaten as raw or cooked vegetables. or used as folk medicine. However, in recent decades,
numerous fungal, fungus-like and bacterial pathogens cause diseases on the roots and collar
roots, and on the foliage of solanaceous crops. Therefore, this study initially aims to introduce
our ongoing survey, mostly focused on fungi and fungus-like organisms dwelling on cultivated,
wild, medicinal and alien invasive plant species in Uzbekistan followed by summarizing of the
results of previous studies in the region, with a special view on microbiota occurring in the
members of Solanaceae. It has been noted that there were several studies on mycobiota of natural
wild plants in Uzbekistan, and our current mycological survey is on solanaceous cultivated and
wild plant species of the same indicated study area. Field trips to urban and natural landscapes
were organized in 2021-2022. Thirty-nine fungi and fungus-like taxa (33 ascomycetous, 2
basidiomycetous, and 4 fungus-like) were reported from stems, leaves and fruits of Solanum
species. Most of these taxa belong to Sordariomycetes (9 genera and 12 species),
Dothideomycetes (6 genera and 9 species) and Eurotiomycetes (2 genera and 5 species). The
most frequent genera observed were Alternaria, Aspergillus, Fulvia, Fusarium, Leveillula,
Penicillium, Phytophthora, Rhizoctonia, and Verticillium. Fungi and fungus-like taxa were found
on six cultivated, medicinal and invasive species of Solanum. The number of microfungal and
oomycetes species is reported in descending order for the following host species as Solanum
lycopersicum (25 species), S. tuberosum (19 species), S. melongena (8 species); S. dulcamara,
S. nigrum and S. villosum, each has one fungal species. Furthermore, it has been observed that
fungi and fungi-like oomycete pathogens cause serious diseases of major crops such as various
cultivars of tomato, potato and eggplant in the same study area. An ongoing survey is needed
here to obtain a more precise assessment of the fungi and fungus-like pathogens. This work was
supported by the Ministry of Innovative Development of the Republic of Uzbekistan “Producing
of digital maps of invasive and quarantine plants foci in natural landscapes” and MUK-2021-46
“R & D of bioactive polysaccharide from medicinal basidiomycetes Phellinus linteus grown in
Uzbekistan” and State scientific and technical program of Uzbekistan (Diversity, monitoring,
and creation of a database of pathogenic fungi causing diseases of economically important plants:
export fruits, vegetables, and melon crops (in the case of Namangan and Bukhara regions).