During the last 15 years, about 2000 strains of 200 species of 98 genera of fungi have been isolated from around the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station. Many of these microfungi are capable of growing into and decomposing 'hot particles'; carbon based radioactive graphite from the reactor and there are suggestions that some fungi actively direct their growth toward sources of radioactivity, possib...

The ability of two white rot fungi to deplete pentachlorophenol (PCP) from soil, which was contaminated with a commercial wood preservative, was examined in a field study. Inoculation of soil containing 250 to 400 μg of PCP g-1 with either Phanerochaete chrysosporium or P. sordida resulted in an overall decrease of 88 to 91% of PCP in the soil in 6.5 weeks. This decrease was achieved under subo...

We simultaneously examined the bacteria, fungi and nematode communities in Andosols from four agro-geographical sites in Japan using polymerase chain reaction-denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (PCR-DGGE) and statistical analyses to test the effects of environmental factors including soil properties on these communities depending on geographical sites. Statistical analyses such as Principa...

Soil microbial communities undergo rapid shifts following modifications in environmental conditions. Although microbial diversity changes may alter soil functioning, the in situ temporal dynamics of microbial diversity is poorly documented. Here, we investigated the response of fungal and bacterial diversity to wheat straw input in a 12-months field experiment and explored whether this response...

Fungi are an important and diverse component of soil communities, but these communities have proven difficult to study in conventional biotic surveys. We evaluated soil fungal diversity at two sites in a temperate forest using direct isolation of small-subunit and internal transcribed spacer (ITS) rRNA genes by PCR and high-throughput sequencing of cloned fragments. We identified 412 sequence t...

Biological residues in soil dust are a potentially strong source of atmospheric ice nuclei (IN). So far, however, the abundance, diversity, sources, seasonality, and role of biological – in particular, fungal – IN in soil dust have not been characterized. By analysis of the culturable fungi in topsoils, from a range of different land use and ecosystem types in southeast Wyoming, we found ice-nu...

Factors affecting the occurrence and distribution of entomopathogenic fungi in 244 soil samples collected from natural and cultivated areas in Spain were studied using an integrated approach based on univariate and multivariate analyses. Entomopathogenic fungi were isolated from 175 of the 244 (71.7%) soil samples, with only two species found, Beauveria bassiana and Metarhizium anisopliae. Of t...

Thepecanweevil,Curculio caryae (Horn), is amajor pest of pecans in the Southeastern United States. Entomopathogenic nematodes and fungi are potential alternatives to chemical insecticides for C. caryae control. Our objective was to survey pecan orchards in the southeastern United States for entomopathogenic nematodes and fungi and determine the virulence of the new isolates to C. caryae larvae....

Soil is considered as the hot-spot region of beneficial plant-microbe association. A wide range of soil microbial categories like nitrogen-fixing bacteria, ecto and endo-mycorrhizal fungi and plant growth-promoting bacteria and fungi are seemed to be associated with this beneficial plant-microbe association. The soil microbes confer increased plant growth and productivity against the root patho...

This study presents results of research on a number of microorganisms in soil of the Chełmżyńskie lake watershed and their role in the decomposition of chitin. The authors also examined the level of respiration activity of soil in the presence of shrimp waste. Results demonstrate that the number of microorganisms in soil were variable. During the entire research period, the analyzed groups of m...