COMMENTS ON ASPERGILLUS
Culture of Aspergillus
Keep the bread in a petri dish and moist the bread by sprinkling water. Put the petri dish in a bell jar for a few days of normal room temperature. The appearance of green patches over substratum indicates the growth of fungus.
Disease symptoms
Aspergillus is a saprophytic fungus that grows on moist rotten wood, vegetables, fruits, dead organisms, etc as a smoky green patch over the substratum, so named as blue-green mold.
Somatic structure
Mycelium:
The somatic thallus is represented by profusely branched septate cottony mycelium. They are interwoven masses of hyphae.
Cellular structure
Rectangular cell:
The cell is rectangular consisting of many nuclei embedded within the man of granules vacuoles and oil globules bearing cytoplasm surrounded by the cell wall.
Asexual reproductive structure.
i) Conidiophore:
The conidiophore is an erect septate hyphae that originated from the foot cell. Its terminal ends bear a round vesicle carrying a number of bottle-shaped multinucleate primary sterigmata. The primary sterigmata may possess secondary sterigmata at its tip. The tip of conidiophore buds off a chain of conidia in basipetal succession. The conidia are separated from each other by sterile disjuncture cells.
ii) Conidium:
It is a spherical, thin walled uninucleate cytoplasmic mass surrounded by double layered smoky greenish walls. The protoplasmic mass encloses or globules as stored food materials.
