Phylum:
Deutromycota
An
important division of fungi with around 17,000 species. Many of these are
saprobic, but many are of great importance to us because they are parasites
which diseases of plants, animals, and human. However, it is a dustbin phylum.
Contain species that have no known normal sexual stage so that they cannot be
placed with confidence in other classes. Most reproduce by conidia, although a
few are purely mycelial, developing no spores. The conidia are produced
externally on conidiophores or more rarely directly from the vegetative
mycelium The great majority of the fungi in the class are likely to be
Ascomycota in which the ascus stage has not yet been discovered or in which it
has been lost in the course of evolution. A few may be conidial stages of
Basidiomycota.
(The stage in which the normal sexual
fusion of haploid nuclei occurs is known as teleomorph, the asexual
stage being the anamorph. The whole fungus including all its morphis known as the holomorph).
The
division of Deutromycota into two large groups is based on morphology of
conidial apparatus.