Morpho-cultural, pathogenic, and genetic characterization of Indian isolates of Macrophomina phaseolina causing charcoal rot in soybean

• DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2025.e42035
• Publication Date: 2025-01-18T18:04:02Z
• Authors: Laxman Singh Rajput; Sanjeev Kumar; Kriti Pathak; Palak Acharya; Divyanshu Goswami; Vennampally Nataraj; Maranna Shivakumar; Hemant Singh Mahe...; Saloni Mandloi; Sapna Jaiswal; Asha Yadav; Raksha Vishwakarma
• Keywords: Macrophomina phaseolina; Charcoal

Macrophomina phaseolina, a devastating soil and seed-borne fungus causing charcoal rot in soybean, poses significant challenge to soybean production breeding programs across all major soybean-growing regions of India. Fifty-five M. phaseolina isolates were collected from India's eight diverse agroecological regions. These examined for morpho-cultural, molecular, pathogenic variability. All these the had variability different Morpho-cultural characters. Principal component analysis (PCA) showed that most traits are not having association with traits. Cluster 55 classified into two groups, virulence characters did separate based on origin. Group B more diversity included virulent pathogen isolates. Phylogenetic Internal Transcribed Spacer (ITS), conserved rDNA region, revealed limited among Irrespective morpho-cultural characters, (n = 52) clustered group. Pathogenic has region specific isolate GGE biplot segregated main effect each component, cultivars (G), (I), G × I interactions levels (p < 0.001). The contributed 56.30 % total variation, followed by varieties (36.79 %) interaction (4.96 %). also provides information highly discriminative may be useful screening genotypes identifying quantitative trait loci (QTL) linked rot.