Translation elongation factor 1alpha (EF1-alpha) gene
DNA extraction of the swab samples was conducted using the NucleoSpinR 96 Soil extraction kit (Macherey-Nagel, Germany) following kit instructions. A two step PCR was performed using Fusarium-specific primers Fa-150 and Ra-2, which target the translation elongation factor 1-alpha (TEF-1a) gene (430bp), followed by the Fluidigm (Acces Array Barcode Library for Illumina Sequencers-384, Single Direction, Fluidigm Corporation, South San Francisco, CA, USA) protocol for sequencing on the Illumina MiSeq sequencing platform.