Morphological Variability of the Curvularia lunata Associated with Grain Discoloration of Rice

Rice is an important staple crop and India is the largest grower in the world. Rice suffers from many diseases caused by fungi of which grain discoloration disease is a complex disease due to infection by certain microorganisms on the glumes, kernels, or both. Curvularia lunata is a one of major fungal plant pathogen that infects rice and causes grain discolouration. On the basis of cultural and morphological identification, 60 isolates of Curvularia lunata were collected from different locations of Karnataka. These isolates were grown on PDA media and were characterized for colony morphology. The Curvularia lunata isolates, maximum size of conidia was observed in Cl-22 (20.30 m long ×10.90 m wide) and maximum dry mycelium weight was observed in Cl-15 (482.22 mg), while poor sporulations (<1-10 conidia per microscope field) was noticed in Cl-17, 19, 28, 30, 45 and Cl-50.