Taxonomic Position of Korean Isolates of Rhizoctonia solani Based on RAPD and ITS Sequencing of Ribosomal DNA

Taxonomic position of 46 Korean isolates of Rhizodonia solani which were classified into nine intraspecific groups by anastomosis and cultural characteristics was analyzed by randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) and sequence analyses of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) regions of ribosomal DNA. All the isolates within each group showed highly similar band patterns in RAPD. The ITS regions of the isolates within the same groups showed a high level of sequence similarity above 96.0% whereas similarities among different groups were below 94.4%. When compared with several reference strains of R. solani from foreign countries, all the Korean isolates were clustered with the foreign isolates belonging to the same groups in the phylogenetic tree. All six Korean strains of AG-4 were identified as HG-1 out of 3 subgroup of AG-4. We discussed taxonomic position of Korean isolates of R. solani and showed that sequence analysis with ITS regions could be a rapid and useful method for identification of intraspecific group of R. solani.