Ali Kareem Mohammed Al-Taae* and Huda Hazim Wafi Al-Taae
الملخص الانجليزي
Cucumis melo var. flexuosus , which is commonly known as Armenian cucumber
is one of the most economically important species of the family Cucurbitaceae. In June of
2018, wilt symptoms were observed on Armenian cucumber plants in Fadhilia ,Ninevah
governorate ,North of Iraq. The fungus was isolated from diseased tissues and initially
identified based on, its morphological characterizations using conidial and hyphal structures..
Pathogenicity of the fungus was also confirmed by Koch’s postulates. Molecular
identification of the fungal pathogen was done by amplifying the internal transcribed
spacer (ITS) region of the conserved ribosomal DNA. All these ITS sequences showed
homologous to those of Fusarium oxysporum isolates in the GenBank database with a
similarity percentage of 99%.. To the best of our knowledge this is the first molecular record
of F. oxysporium on the Armenian cucumber in Iraq .