Indian Pucciniales: taxonomic outline with important descriptive notes

Abstract

Rusts constitute a major group of the Kingdom Fungi and they are distributed all over the world on a wide range of wild and cultivated plants. It is the largest natural group of plant pathogens including 95% of the subphylum Pucciniomycotina and about 8% of all described Fungi. This article provides an overview and outline of rust fungi of India with important descriptive notes. After compilation of available literature on Indian rust fungi from various sources, it was observed that these fungi are distributed in 16 families, 69 genera and 640 species. They belong to Coleosporiaceae, Crossopsoraceae, Gymnosporangiaceae, Melampsoraceae, Milesinaceae, Ochropsoraceae, Phakopsoraceae, Phragmidiaceae, Pileolariaceae, Pucciniaceae, Pucciniastraceae, Raveneliaceae, Skierkaceae, Sphaerophragmiaceae, Tranzscheliaceae and Zaghouaniaceae. There are still many rust fungi with uncertain taxonomic position, and they have been referred to incertae sedis. The placement of all fungal genera is provided at the class, order and family-level along with number of species in a genus. Notes for each rust family along with total Indian records and other taxonomic information on transferred genera and species are also presented. A phylogenetic analysis from a combined LSU and ITS dataset for 25 rust genera is presented to provide a better understanding of their phylogeny and evolution.