Pertanika J. Trop. Agric. Sc. 42 (2): 735 - 743 (2019) © Universiti Putra Malaysia Press TROPICAL AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE Journal homepage: http://www.pertanika.upm.edu.my/ Article history: Received: 29 October 2018 Accepted: 04 January 2019 Published: 30 May 2019 ARTICLE INFO E-mail addresses: sitifatimahmdisa@gmail.com (Siti Fatimah Md-Isa) ainizzati@upm.edu.my (Nur Ain Izzati Mohd-Zainuddin) chrisyong@upm.edu.my (Christina Seok Yien Yong) rusea@upm.edu.my (Rusea Go) * Corresponding author ISSN: 1511-3701 e-ISSN: 2231-8542 Short Communication Identifcation of Microfungi Isolated from Belian Fruits Siti Fatimah Md-Isa, Nur Ain Izzati Mohd-Zainuddin, Christina Seok Yien Yong and Rusea Go* Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia ABSTRACT Belian tree (Eusideroxylon zwageri Teijsm. & Binn.) is one of the highly demanded commercial timber tree indigenous to the Southeast Asian region. The tree is threatened with over exploitation; habitat destruction and slow regeneration. While vascular plants are known as major reservoirs of fungi species, there have been no studies to identify the microfungi isolated from fruits of this endemic tree. By using internal transcribed spacers (ITS) sequence analysis, fve genera were isolated and identifed as Annulohypoxylon, Daldinia, Hypoxylon, Lasiodiplodia and Trichoderma. This result will be primarily used as baseline data for further investigations on microfungi diversity associated with Belian tree. Keywords: Annulohypoxylon, Borneo ironwood, Daldinia, Eusideroxylon zwageri, Hypoxylon, Lauraceae, Lasiodiplodia, Trichoderma INTRODUCTION Fungi plays an important role in the optimal functioning of the ecosystem. In general, they involved in the breakdown of nutrients on the forest foor, which for ready uptake by the plants but in most cases the role of individual fungi in nature is unknown (Mueller & Bill, 2004). Apart from being an important contributors to the diversity of organisms in the forest, microfungi have been consistently utilized in the drug production, food processing, bio-control agents as well as in enzyme biotechnolgy (Kumar et al., 2013; Snaddon et al., 2012). A study on microfungi associated with endemic plants in Mauritius reported more than 200 taxa of microfungi with approximately 90% of being new genus (Dulymamode et al., 2001) while study in Kenya reported four fungal taxa were new to science detected from their endemic and rare brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by Universiti Putra Malaysia Institutional Repository