Gibberellin production and plant growth enhancement by newly isolated strain of Scolecobasidium tshawytschae.

We isolated nine endophytic fungi from the roots of saltstressed soybean cultivar Daewonkong and screened them for growth-promoting secondary metabolites. Of all fungal isolates, P-4-3 induced maximum growth promotion of waito-c rice and soybean. Analysis of the culture filtrate of P-4-3 showed the presence of physiologically active gibberellins GA1, GA3, GA4, and GA7, along with physiologically inactive GA15 and GA24. The plant growth promotion and gibberellinproducing capacity of P-4-3 was much higher than wildtype Gibberella fujikuroi, which was taken as the control during the present study. The fungal isolate P-4-3 was identified as a new strain of Scolecobasidium tshawytschae through the morphological characteristics and phylogenetic analysis of 18S rDNA sequence. Gibberellins production and plant growth promoting ability of genus Scolecobasidium was reported for the first time in the present study.