Materials and methods Vanilla sp. plants to isolate fungal endophytes were collected in the Atlantic Coast near Morrosquillo gulf and Montes de Maria (Sucre), Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (Magdalena), San Pedro de Urabá; San Luis; San Jerónimo and Porce (Antioquia); Yopal (Casanare); Serranía de la Macarena (Caquetá); Buenaventura and surroundings (Valle del Cauca) (Table 1). In each location at least three vanilla plants were selected that had good growth and without any visual symptoms of disease or nutritional deficiencies. For each plant root samples of approximately 20 cm length were collected and placed on 10 g of adjacent soil. Root were exposed trying to avoid their altera
Table 1. Collection sites where Vanilla sp. in wild state were registered, Colombia. Location Department Porce Antioquia San Jerónimo Antioquia San Luis Antioquia San Pedro de Urabá Antioquia Yopal Meta Serranía de la Macarena Sucre Golfo de Morrosquillo Sucre Buenaventura Valle del Cauca S. N. de Santa Marta Magdalena
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tion, cut with pruners, packed in hermetic closure plastic bags, properly labelled and moved fast to the lab on styrofoam boxes; there, they were washed with tap water, superficially disinfected with 70% ethanol for 1 min, 3% sodium hypochlorite for 30 s and, finally washed three times with sterile distilled water (Otero et al., 2002). For sowing 2 mm cuts were done with sterile surgical blades. On Petri dishes were sowed in triplicate eight root fragments. Media used for isolations was potato dextrose agar (PDA), supplemented with 50 µg/ml of penicillin and streptomycin sulfate before incubation in the dark at 28 °C for eight days. Molecular identification was performed using the obtained colonies by sequencing the ITS regions according to the protocols of the Cellular and Molecular Biology lab of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia - Medellín (data not shown).