First Report of Entomopathogen Beauveria felina as a Fungal Endophyte in Banana Plants

This short article reports the isolation and identification of Beauveria felina, an entomopathogen as a fungal endophyte of banana, isolated from the healthy roots of locally cultivated banana from Nagaland, a northeastern state of India. Identification was done on the basis of morphological characteristics and molecular identification using ITS1 (forward) and ITS4 (reverse) primers. In Petri plates, the colony was observed as white creamish, the aerial hyphae from the colonies produced erect synnematous structures which were hairlike, long and abundant. Microscopically, the conidia were single celled, oval to ellipsoidal, hyaline, appearing at the tip of conidiogenous cell, 10×14 μm in size under 40× objective lens. Molecular identification confirmed that the closest identity of the isolate was Beauveria felina. To our best knowledge, this is the first report of B. felina as a fungal endophyte associated with banana or any other plant in the world.