Molecular characterization of leaf spot fungi using internal transcribed spacer (ITS) based phylogenetic inference

The plant pathogenic leaf spot fungi cause loss in crop yield. Fungi and other pathogens such as a virus, bacteria, cause leaf spot diseases and nematodes play a secondary role. Therefore, it is of interest to study internal transcribed spacer (ITS) sequence from the plant pathogenic fungi. Hence, we collected nineteen different isolates at Madurai Kamaraj University, Tamilnadu, India for this study. We report nineteen positive isolates identified with species-level characterization using ITS sequence supported with a phylogenetic tree and corresponding secondary structure analysis.