Cultural and Morphological Variabilty in Rhizoctonia solani Isolates of Different Rice Growing Areas of Chhattisgarh, India

The sheath blight disease of rice caused by Rhizoctonia solani is an economically important disease in India. A survey was carried out to find the disease severity of sheath blight of rice and collected the disease samples from the different locations of Chhattisgarh. Fifty eight isolates of R. solani collected from various locations of Chhattisgarh were studied for their morphological and cultural variation. Cultural and morphological parameters of each isolate like growth pattern of mycelium, colony colour, Colony growth diameter (mm) at different intervals was recorded after inoculation of R. solani on to the sterilized PDA in 90 mm Petri plates incubated at 28 ± 2 0C in B.O.D incubator after 15 days [1]. The isolates were assigned code numbers such as RS1, where "RS" named Rhizoctonia solani and "1" denote the serial number of the isolate. The R. solani isolates RS1, RS2, RS3, RS4, RS5, RS12, RS19, RS34, RS50 and RS57 were recorded as fast growing isolates. The color of the fungal colony was varied from light brown to dark brown.