Diversity of Endophytic Fungi in Plant Species: Traditional vs. Metagenomic Approaches.

Plant microbiomes impact plant life, with fungi's unique characteristics influencing classification. Cultivation technologies influence fungal classification, and research links soil fungi with plant hosts. This study utilizes morphological and phylogenetic methods, along with NGS data from ITS2 secondary structure predicted endophytes, to identify plant leaves using both traditional and high-resolution techniques. Various topology of the study site was examined. Recent ecological studies highlight unculturable taxa, or dark taxa, where many species cannot sporulate or be cultured emphasizing the need for metagenomics approaches. The study gathered 68,791 reads from S. auriculata with 101 OTU's, 58,620 from C. spinosa with 219 OTU'S, and 66,087 from Z. mauritiana with 193 OTU's, with the majority of OTUs were related to Colletotrichum (69%) and a minimum of Ustilago (16%). A total of 49 fungal isolates were obtained from traditional methods, while 513 fungal OTU's were retrieved through metagenomic methods, confirming the presence of a highly abundant fungus population in plant samples. The study reveals that using the ITS short amplicon sequencing technique provides distinct insights into endophytic fungal communities in three plant samples. In conclusion, analysing plant fungal components using a combination of culture dependent and culture independent techniques may be a novel strategy.