Abstract
Solanum is the largest genus in the family Solanaceae with about 2500 identified speciesworldwide distributed, except Antarctica. This genus is regarded as economically significantbased on their multiple uses in food crops as well as ornamental and medicinal plants. InUzbekistan, about 24 species of Solanaceae have been reported and of these, 7 species belong tothe genus Solanum, some of which are wild while others are cultivated with their leaves, fruits,or both eaten as raw or cooked vegetables. or used as folk medicine. However, in recent decades,numerous fungal, fungus-like and bacterial pathogens cause diseases on the roots and collarroots, and on the foliage of solanaceous crops. Therefore, this study initially aims to introduceour ongoing survey, mostly focused on fungi and fungus-like organisms dwelling on cultivated,wild, medicinal and alien invasive plant species in Uzbekistan followed by summarizing of theresults of previous studies in the region, with a special view on microbiota occurring in themembers of Solanaceae. It has been noted that there were several studies on mycobiota of naturalwild plants in Uzbekistan, and our current mycological survey is on solanaceous cultivated andwild plant species of the same indicated study area. Field trips to urban and natural landscapeswere organized in 2021-2022. Thirty-nine fungi and fungus-like taxa (33 ascomycetous, 2basidiomycetous, and 4 fungus-like) were reported from stems, leaves and fruits of Solanumspecies. Most of these taxa belong to Sordariomycetes (9 genera and 12 species),Dothideomycetes (6 genera and 9 species) and Eurotiomycetes (2 genera and 5 species). Themost frequent genera observed were Alternaria, Aspergillus, Fulvia, Fusarium, Leveillula,Penicillium, Phytophthora, Rhizoctonia, and Verticillium. Fungi and fungus-like taxa were foundon six cultivated, medicinal and invasive species of Solanum. The number of microfungal andoomycetes species is reported in descending order for the following host species as Solanumlycopersicum (25 species), S. tuberosum (19 species), S. melongena (8 species); S. dulcamara,S. nigrum and S. villosum, each has one fungal species. Furthermore, it has been observed thatfungi and fungi-like oomycete pathogens cause serious diseases of major crops such as variouscultivars of tomato, potato and eggplant in the same study area. An ongoing survey is neededhere to obtain a more precise assessment of the fungi and fungus-like pathogens. This work wassupported by the Ministry of Innovative Development of the Republic of Uzbekistan “Producing of digital maps of invasive and quarantine plants foci in natural landscapes” and MUK-2021-46“R & D of bioactive polysaccharide from medicinal basidiomycetes Phellinus linteus grown inUzbekistan” and State scientific and technical program of Uzbekistan (Diversity, monitoring,and creation of a database of pathogenic fungi causing diseases of economically important plants:export fruits, vegetables, and melon crops (in the case of Namangan and Bukhara regions).