Integrated Biochemical, Cultural and Numerical Methods

In recent years there has been a considerable expansion in the types of characters available for characterising and grouping filamentous fungi. In addition to the more established morphological and anastomosis groupings and pathological behaviour, recent studies within the genus Rhizoctonia have included sequence analysis of the rDNA gene cluster, RFLPS, RAPDs, whole cell fatty acid and isoenzyme analyses (Sweetingham et al., 1986; Vilgalys and Gonzales 1990; Laroche et al.,1992; Liu and Sinclair, 1992; Duncan et al., 1993; Johnk and Jones, 1993; O’Brien, 1994; Vilgalys and Cubeta, 1994; Tommerup et al., 1995). Although not recently emphasised within Rhizoctonia, other biochemical linkages such as enzyme production, secondary metabolite production and carbon and nitrogen source utilisation have been used with other fungal groups (Bridge and Hawksworth, 1985; Manczinger and Polner, 1987; Frisvad, 1992).