Biodiversity of soil-mycoflora of islamabad pakistan using two isolation methods

The soil microfungal flora of Islamabad were investigated, by using the direct plate and dilution plate methods. A total of 4,225 fungal colonies were isolated from 80 samples collected from Islamabad, Pakistan. The species-composition revealed 66 different species belonging to 20 fungal genera. Among these, Penicillium, being most common and prevalent, was ranked as the dominant genus with respect to the test-sites. Most of the species belong to genera Aspergillus and Penicillium. The maximum number of colonies i.e. 1797 were developed on DRBC, followed by PDA (1320) and the minimum number was recorded on SDA (1108). The results indicate that 4 of these species belong to Mucorales, one to Sphaeriales, one to Coelomycetes and 60 to Hyphomycetes. The most widespread genera were Aspergillus (16 species), Penicillium (15 species) and Acremonium (7 species). The most common species were Aspergillus niger (241 colonies), Cladosporium cladosporioides (219 colonies), Penicillium charlesii (201 colonies), Aspergillus flavus (200 colonies), Penicillium frequantus (198 colonies), Penicillium purpurogenum (178 colonies) and Alternaria alternata (176 colonies). Direct plating and dilution plating with three media, i.e. Potato Dextrose Agar, Dichloran Rose Bengal Agar, and Sabrouad Dextrose Agar, were used in this study. Dilution plating with Dichloran Rose Bengal Chloramphenicol Agar (DRBC) was found to be the most suitable. Other two media i.e. Potato Dextrose Agar (PDA) and Sabrouad Dextrose Agar (SDA) were also tried for cultivation of fungal species with successful results. (author)