2.2. Preparation of fungal cultures
FOC was cultured on a potato dextrose agar medium at 25 C in
the dark for 7 days. Then, 8-mm-wide discs of fungus-containing
agar were excised from the culture margins and inoculated into
500 mL Erlenmeyer flasks containing Bilay’s medium (Tan et al.,
2011). The flasks were incubated for 6 days at 28 C with rotary
shaking at 180 rpm. The resulting fungal cultures were filtered
through four layers of cheesecloth to remove the mycelia and then
centrifuged at 8000 g for 20 min to pellet the conidia. The conidia
were resuspended in sterile water and quantified using a
hemocytometer.