Wheat foot rot disease is caused by Sclerotium rolfsii Sacc., a soil-inhabiting pathogen with a broad host range. In wheat, this pathogen causes blighted appearance and death. Studies on this organism have been performed mainly on morphological, physiological and pathogenic variability, but molecular diversity analysis based on the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region of isolates collected from different wheat growing areas of Karnataka has not been attempted. ITSs are widely used for molecular detection and species identification. In this study, the DNA sequence of the region amplified by the ITS5 and ITS4 primer pair was used to detect five isolates of S. rolfsii collected from different agro-climatic zones of Karnataka. BLAST analysis of the aligned ITS5/4 sequences of the five isolates showed sequence homology with other Athelia rolfsii (teleomorph of S. rolfsii) sequences reported on other crops, while no previous sequences have been reported from wheat. Phylogenetic relationships across these isolates were analyzed and showed significant variability between the isolates by grouping them into two clades. To our knowledge, this is the first report of a molecular sequence of Sclerotium rolfsii infecting wheat.

小麦足腐病由Sclerotium rolfsii Sacc.引起，  Sclerotium rolfsii Sacc. 是一种寄主范围广泛的土壤栖息病原体。在小麦中，这种病原体会导致枯萎的外观和死亡。对该生物的研究主要是在形态、生理和致病变异方面进行，但尚未尝试基于从卡纳塔克邦不同小麦种植区收集的分离株的内部转录间隔区 (ITS) 区域进行分子多样性分析。ITS广泛用于分子检测和物种鉴定。本研究利用 ITS5 和 ITS4 引物对扩增区域的 DNA 序列检测 5 株S. rolfsii从卡纳塔克邦的不同农业气候带收集。5 个分离株的比对 ITS5/4 序列的 BLAST 分析显示与其他作物上报道的其他Athelia rolfsii（S. rolfsii 的端形）序列的序列同源性，而之前没有报道过小麦的序列。分析了这些分离株之间的系统发育关系，并通过将它们分成两个进化枝来显示分离株之间的显着变异性。据我们所知，这是感染小麦的Sclerotium rolfsii分子序列的第一份报告。