Infraspecific diversity of Beauveria bassiana from India based on DNA microsatellite markers

Abstract

Beauveria bassiana is an insect-associated fungal species and it is economically important as an environment-friendly mycoinsecticide and a good source of biologically active secondary metabolites. In this study, we employed DNA microsatellite markers to investigate the infraspecific diversity of 102 isolates of B. bassiana sensu stricto from India. All the microsatellite markers were easily amplifiable for all the isolates and provided a good genotype resolution. The microsatellite analysis indicated the presence of highly polymorphic, randomly distributed populations of B. bassiana with variable host range and apparently no host-specificity. We, however, observed region-wise clustering of the populations within B. bassiana sensu stricto from India.