DIVERSITY OF EPIPHYTIC AND ENDOPHYTIC MICROORGANISMS IN SOME DOMINANT WEEDS

Diversity in epi and endophytic microorganisms from the local weeds is thoroughly studied in this paper. For this purpose,46 fungal and 19 bacterial strains were isolated from the surfaces and the inner tissues of four dominant agricultural weeds. Leafwash and homogenized leaf mixture solution were used for the isolations from healthy leaves of four weeds viz. Chenopodiumalbum, Euphorbia helioscopia, Parthenium hysterophorus and Convolvulus arvensis. Our study indicated that complex interactions existed between the host and their epi and endophytic microflora. Each weed has specific bacterial community with the reference of epi and endo phyllosphere. The number and species of bacterial strains varied not only with theirhost weed plants but also in epi and endo phyllospere.Sorensen’s QS of all tested weeds for the endophytic andepiphytic bacterial assemblages was 0.00 that indicated nospecies overlap / similarity between the communities. Five fungal genera were common as epi and endophytes in all weeds samples: Aspergillus (56% of all isolates), Drechslera (10%),Alternaria (10%) Penicillium (6%) and Cladosporium (4%).Frequency of all five common genera differed significantly among weeds. It was also noted that endophytic fungal communities were not noticeably less speciose than epiphyte communities.Sorensen’s QS of E. helipscopia (0.23), C. album (0.37) and C.arvensis (0.46) for the endophytic and epiphytic fungal assemblages was intermediate in the range (0.12–0.79) of previous studies. In case of P. hysterophorus, the value for Sorensen’s QS was 0.00 indicating no species similarity. The other identified genera were rare, such as Absidia, Cuvularia,Phoma and Trichoderma.