title: Age-dependent Distribution of Fungal Endophytes in Panax ginseng Roots Cultivated in Korea.
abstract: Fungal endophytes were isolated from 1-, 2-, 3-, and 4-year-old ginseng roots (Panax ginseng Meyer) cultivated in Korea. The isolated fungal endophytes were identified based on sequence analysis of the internal transcribed spacer and morphological characterization by microscopic observations. A total of 81 fungal endophytes were isolated from 24 ginseng roots. Fungal endophytes were classified into 9 different fungal species and 2 unknown species. Ginseng roots that were 1-, 2-, 3-, and 4-years old were colonized by 2, 6, 8, and 5 species of fungal endophytes, respectively. While Phoma radicina was the most frequent fungal endophyte in 2-, 3-, and 4-year-old ginseng roots, Fusarium solani was the dominant endophyte in 1-year-old ginseng roots. The colonization frequencies (CF) varied with the host age. The CF were 12%, 40%, 31%, and 40% for 1-, 2-, 3-, and 4-year-old ginseng roots, respectively. We found a variety of fungal endophytes that were distributed depending on the age of ginseng plants.
authors.affiliation: School of Biotechnology, Yeungnam University, Gyeongsan 712-749, Korea.
authors.forename: Young-Hwan
authors.initials: YH
authors.lastname: Park
authors.forename: Young-Chang
authors.initials: YC
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Sang Un
authors.initials: SU
authors.lastname: Park
authors.forename: Hyoun-Sub
authors.initials: HS
authors.lastname: Lim
authors.forename: Joon Bum
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Byoung-Kwan
authors.initials: BK
authors.lastname: Cho
authors.forename: Hanhong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Bae
keywords: Fungal endophytes; Internal transcribed spacer sequence; Panax ginseng