Variabilidade genética para a produção de quitinase em coleção de fungos da caatinga com potencial aplicação no controle biológico de pragas.

Abstract

The Caatinga is a growing potential for the exploration sector of microorganisms with commercial characteristics for the production of secondary metabolites, among which stands out the entomopathogenic fungi. These have been used as an alternative to biological control of insect pests in agriculture because secrete enzymes capable of degrading exoskeleton constituents of these pathogens. In this context, this study aimed to verify the existence of genetic variability for the production of chitinase in fungal isolates belonging to filamentous fungi collection of the Caatinga. Evaluating cell growth of the genotypes in the presence of chitin, as well as quantifying the Enzyme Index (IE) through the diffusion method in agar gel, which worth more than two classified the fungal isolates as promising for the production of chitinase. Among the 117 fungal isolates only 45.3% had growth profile. Significant effect showing chitinolytic activity of fungal isolates, indicating the existence of genetic variability and suggests favorable situation for the selection of these genotypes. There was, by Scott-Knott test at 5% probability, the formation of three groups of genotypes with different skills and the CDSA-097, CDSA-098 and CDSA-111 those with higher performance for response variable under study.