Seven new species of Sordariomycetes isolated from apple and pear orchard soils in Korea

Seven new species of Sordariomycetes isolated from apple and pear orchard soils in Korea

HyeongJin Noh, Hyun Uk Cho and Seong Hwan Kim*

Department of Microbiology, Dankook University, Cheonan, 31116, Korea

*Email: piceae@dankook.ac.kr

Sordariomycetes, a subdivision of Ascomycota, is the second largest class and has a worldwide distribution mainly on land, although some are also found in aquatic habitats. Some of the Sordariomycetes are known to cause disease in arthropods and mammals, or plant pathogens that cause disease in leaves, stems, and roots in a variety of plant hosts. By 2023, Sordariomycetes consisted of 26,295 species in 6 subclasses, 54 orders, 90 families and 1344 genera, and is steadily increasing. In the process of isolating and identifying fungi from soils in apple and pear orchards, we discovered seven novel Sordariomycetes candidates that are important as pathogens or decomposers. The seven candidate species discovered were Botryotrichum sp. nov., Enterocarpus sp. nov., Microascus sp. nov., Plectosphaerella sp. nov., Sarocladium sp. nov., Varicosporellopsis sp. nov. and Volutella sp. nov. In this work, we described morphological characteristics of the seven novel species of Sordariomycetes and their taxonomic position in the phylogenetic trees based on Internal Transcribed Spacer (ITS), Large Subunit (LSU), Beta Tubulin (TUB), Translation Elongation Factor 1α (TEF-1α) and DNA-directed RNA polymerase II (RPB2).