Dipsacus asperoides
contains multiple pharmacologically active compounds. The principal are saponins. The plant can be cultivated, but it contains lower levels of bioactive compounds than the plant in the wild. It may be the reason to exploit the endophytic fungi that colonize the plant roots in order to produce bioactive compounds. However, the endophytic fungi of
D. asperoides
have not been analyzed in detail. In this study, we isolated and identified 46 endophytic fungal strains from the taproots, lateral roots and leaves, and we used morphological and molecular biological methods to assign them into 15 genera:
Fusarium
sp.,
Ceratobasidium
sp.,
Chaetomium
sp.,
Penicillium
sp.,
Aspergillus
sp.,
Talaromyces
sp.,
Cladosporium
sp.,
Bionectria
sp.,
Mucor
sp.,
Trichoderma
sp.,
Myrothecium
sp.,
Clonostachys
sp.,
Ijuhya
sp.,
Leptosphaeria
sp. and
Phoma
sp. Taproots contained abundant endophytic fungi, the numbers of which correlated positively with level of dipsacus saponin VI. Primary fermentation of several endophytic fungal strains from taproots showed that
Fusarium, Leptosphaeria, Ceratobasidium
sp. and
Phoma
sp. can produce the triterpenoid saponin. These results may guide efforts to sustainably produce bioactive compounds from
D. asperoides
.
Graphical abstract
Electronic supplementary material
The online version of this article (10.1007/s11274-019-2616-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.