author(s)
DN Kambrekar and J Aruna

abstract
The present experiment was conducted for isolation, identification of endophytic fungi, Beauveria bassiana (Balsamo) Vuillemin from several field crops and their pathogenicity against sorghum stem borer, Chilo partellusSwinhoe during June 2014 to March 2016 at Regional Agricultural Research Station (RARS), Vijayapur, Karnataka, India. The experimental results revealed that, the endophytic B. bassiana is known to present in different parts of the different plants i.e. maize stem, leaves of chickpea, chilli, green gram, citrus, pomegranate fruit, bean pod, cauliflower head and banana pseudo stem. The pathogenicity studies revealed that the endophytic B. bassiana isolated from leaves and stem of the sorghum and maize was found to be pathogenic to sorghum stem borer, Chilo partellus and army worm, Mythimna separata, from cabbage and cauliflower was pathogenic to diamond back moth, Plutella xylostella, and endophytic Beauveria from leaves and fruit of tomato and chilli leaves was pathogenic to chickpea pod borer, Helicoverpa armigera. Further, endophytic B. bassianawas evaluated for the pathogenicity against sorghum stem borer at different doses (1x10⁸ conidia ml^-1) (0.1, 0.2, 0.4, 0.8, 1 and 2 ml per litre). Among all the treatments least population of sorghum stem borer larvae were observed in B. bassiana (1x10⁸ conidia ml^-1) @ 2 ml at 10 days after treatment (4.00 larvae) followed by 7 days after treatment (4.67 larvae). While, highest number of larvae were observed in B. bassiana (1x10⁸ conidia ml^-1) @ 0.1 ml (8.33 larvae) @ 10 DAT which was on par with untreated control (10 larvae). Further, Endophytic B. bassiana could cause larval mortality up to 60.00 per cent at 10 days after treatment. Hence, endophytic B. bassiana present in different parts of the different plants can be largely exploited for the controlling different insect pest in eco-friendly manner.