Illumina Miseq of fungal (ITS2) epiphyte/endophyte populations in Honeycrisp calyx/stem end tissue
Fungal specific ITS primers ITS3/KYO2 (Toju et al., 2012) and ITS4 (White, 1990) were used to amplify the fungal ITS region, while amplification of host DNA was prevented using a blocking-oligo (50-ATTGATATGCTTAATTCAGCGGGTAACCCCGCCTGACCTGGGGTC-GCGTT-C3 spacer 30) (Abdelfattah et al, 2021). Following DNA purification, Reference primers ITS86F (5-GTGAATCATCGAATCTTTGAA-3) and ITS4(R) (5- TCCTCCGCTTATTGATATGC-3)  were used to amplify the fungal ITS2 region for Illumina MiSeq.